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Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

areweanticheatyet.com

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Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#171

Post by macNchz »

kuschku wrote: post #165
macNchz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that having to buy special hardware means fewer people will do it, the types of dongles used for this are likely detectable in some way by kernel-level anticheat, and computer vision based cheats probably work better when you can inject contrasting color textures into the game. I don’t think any system will stop someone truly dedicated, but the general idea is that each thing that adds a little more frictio…

Trying to force ever more restrictive and intrusive controls upon players won't solve cheating. The only way to "solve" cheating is with https://xkcd.com/810/ . Use statistical analysis and server-side controls (fog of war, lockstep calculations) to force cheaters to play indistinguishable from top human players. If you can't tell the difference, does it even matter? > the types of dongles used for this are likely de…

> Trying to force ever more restrictive and intrusive controls upon players won't solve cheating.

I think it's not about "solving" cheating, so much as making it sufficiently annoying to maintain working cheats that fewer people try. Just as in cybersecurity, no individual security measure will "solve" hacking, but in concert they reduce the impact by making it more difficult: the "Swiss Cheese Method" / defense-in-depth.

Reading through game cheating boards, it seems many hardware devices have been detected over time. It's an arms race. Here's a discussion of how anticheat started to detect people using HID-emulating devices by forcing a disconnection event: https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/valorant/615373-vanguard-...

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#172

Post by azthecx »

hexomancer wrote: post #50

One thing I don't understand and I would really appreciate if someone could explain this to me. Why do we need separate anti-cheat programs? Can't the operating systems simply have an option when creating a process that prevents all operations looking at the memory of the process (and maybe if such a process is about to be launched the user has to explicitly accept that by clicking a button)? Wouldn't that stop almos…

For software related cheats maybe, but keep in mind that keyboard, screen and mouse being processed by an entirely separate computer is also very viable.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#173

Post by consteval »

dijit wrote: post #95
tumetab1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason multiplayer servers implicitly trust clients is because it's a cheaper and proven (less risk) solution. The traditional anti-cheat can be just slapped after the game is developed in most games. If the game is very successful then you can just update the game with extra paid protections provided by the anti-cheat tool. The alternative is local game engine that works with a partial game state which is a chal…

As someone working in AAA game development, I come across comments like these often, and they never fail to get under my skin. It’s like watching that infamous "Two idiots, one keyboard" scene from CSI—full of confidence, but completely detached from reality. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it’s tough to tackle this kind of misconception because it’s stated with such certainty that others, who also might not know an…

> because it's a cheaper and proven (less risk) solution

I mean... didn't you just essentially say he's right? Things are done the way they are because of performance (aka "cheaper") and to meet project goals (aka "less risk")

Those aren't bad reasons at all, and it makes perfect sense, especially when you consider already locked-down platforms like consoles. But it seems to me, from what I read here, that the reasons are ultimately cost and risk.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#174

Post by Hikikomori »

macNchz wrote: post #169
Hikikomori wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People buy dma cards and displayport/hdmi mergers to avoid hack detection. Another pc reads memory of your gaming machine through the dma card that creates your ESP overlay and then dp/hdmi is merged through a box. The dma card runs custom firmware that pretends to be some benign peripheral like an usb or soundcard. https://captaindma.com/shop/ There's also hardware aimbot/triggerbot that reads your video output then…

To my understanding, many of these devices are detectable by anticheat: https://www.reddit.com/r/Csgohacks/comments/19dbut1/dma_chea... Anything that's plugged into the machine can be poked, prodded, and logged to a central database by anticheat software.

If you just go and buy a card and use the normal firmware you're gonna get banned. Cheat creators make custom firmware to avoid that. It might be that Faceit is small enough to investigate cheaters thoroughly to get most of them, and with their reputation it might discourage most to even try. But I don't think that scales enough for big games unless you have Riot money.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#175

Post by Hikikomori »

dijit wrote: post #95
tumetab1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason multiplayer servers implicitly trust clients is because it's a cheaper and proven (less risk) solution. The traditional anti-cheat can be just slapped after the game is developed in most games. If the game is very successful then you can just update the game with extra paid protections provided by the anti-cheat tool. The alternative is local game engine that works with a partial game state which is a chal…

As someone working in AAA game development, I come across comments like these often, and they never fail to get under my skin. It’s like watching that infamous "Two idiots, one keyboard" scene from CSI—full of confidence, but completely detached from reality. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it’s tough to tackle this kind of misconception because it’s stated with such certainty that others, who also might not know an…

Did the division have an anticheat when it was released? I remember it being really bad some time after release, like a few steps above most other games in both the number of hackers and their abilities (not just the usual aimbot/esp).

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#176

Post by burnished »

KK7NIL wrote: post #27
burnished wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its just regular intellectual curiosity.

Sure, but you'll need to do more than "read several HN articles over the years" (presumably completely unrelated to anti-cheats?) to get even a basic understanding of how anti-cheats work, as he went on to demonstrate. I also just thought it was unintentionally funny, like a comedic setup for a stereotypically cocky HN user to comment with great confidence on something way outside of their field of expertise. (not sa…

Yes, that stereotype irritates me because it stigmatizes people asking the obvious questions.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#177

Post by dijit »

Hikikomori wrote: post #175
dijit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone working in AAA game development, I come across comments like these often, and they never fail to get under my skin. It’s like watching that infamous "Two idiots, one keyboard" scene from CSI—full of confidence, but completely detached from reality. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it’s tough to tackle this kind of misconception because it’s stated with such certainty that others, who also might not know an…

Did the division have an anticheat when it was released? I remember it being really bad some time after release, like a few steps above most other games in both the number of hackers and their abilities (not just the usual aimbot/esp).

Yes, we did, but it wasn’t good enough (it was the machine learning system I talked about). We later added EAC as well, the situation improved but cheating was still rampant.

(only on PC though, of course).

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#178

Post by Hikikomori »

dijit wrote: post #177
Hikikomori wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the division have an anticheat when it was released? I remember it being really bad some time after release, like a few steps above most other games in both the number of hackers and their abilities (not just the usual aimbot/esp).

Yes, we did, but it wasn’t good enough (it was the machine learning system I talked about). We later added EAC as well, the situation improved but cheating was still rampant. (only on PC though, of course).

Makes sense, ineffective AC and little server side checks, I think the community consensus was that there was no AC at all. I played dark zone quite a bit, kinda first in the raid looter shooter genre. Had a lot of fun with the jumping jacks "bug".

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#179

Post by dijit »

Hikikomori wrote: post #178
dijit wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we did, but it wasn’t good enough (it was the machine learning system I talked about). We later added EAC as well, the situation improved but cheating was still rampant. (only on PC though, of course).

Makes sense, ineffective AC and little server side checks, I think the community consensus was that there was no AC at all. I played dark zone quite a bit, kinda first in the raid looter shooter genre. Had a lot of fun with the jumping jacks "bug".

Its really hard to tell if someones cheating based on the things you can check because it can look like low ping or just a slightly better than average player. In those cases, our genuine best players might accidentally trigger. (which has happened)

There are egregious examples of cheating, sure, but those people are always banned within the hour.

The real killer was the free weekends, it makes it so that there is no “cost” to cheating for a while since being banned on a fresh account has no meaning.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#180

Post by soerxpso »

lousken wrote: post #126
Starz0r wrote: post #73

What an interesting day when you see a site you've worked on for the past 2 (3?) years get posted to HN! Except I tried submitting this site years ago when I had just finished it, but it did not seem like HN was that interested at the time, and I don't blame them. It was very niche and video game related, and the site also looked a lot worse. It's come a long way to the point where there where I collaborated with som…

I disagree with the onclient kernel stuff. Just like with any website, any checking MUST be server side. Kernel stuff not only makes clients inherently less secure and stable, but also for cheat coders it's only a matter of finding vulnerable driver they can use to avoid being caught.

Empirically, it works. Look at Vanguard as an example. There's obviously a privacy tradeoff, but a lot of people would rather avoid cheaters than maintain tight control of their computers. It would be great if anticheat could all be serverside, but I'd love to hear a proposal for how to prevent aimhacking with serverside anticheat alone.
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