Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us • Hacker News Board

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#21

Post by wizzwizz4 » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:18 AM UTC

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #18

Nothing ruins the fun faster than lag-switching lamers. Accordingly, one can never trust client side security enforcement, or you just create a tit-for-tat economy with cheat-code authors. The better solution is often live admins with a cheat-report button, server-side physics reconciliation trip-wires/audits (no time-travelers), and using clipped areas for character buffering (x-ray vision attempts floods buffers an…

> The only information an online game-engine should be pulling is the hashed GPU chip serial-number for account ban enforcement.

Isn't that literally client-side security enforcement?

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#22

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:19 AM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #13

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

I am not a fan of anti cheats, but I do like to play video games online and I want to be able to play fair games without cheaters. I am not sure what other options there are.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#23

Post by fwip » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:20 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #22

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #13

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

I am not a fan of anti cheats, but I do like to play video games online and I want to be able to play fair games without cheaters. I am not sure what other options there are.

Consoles have a lot fewer cheaters.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#24

Post by orbital-decay » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:20 AM UTC

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #16

[flagged]

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait. Even a decade ago, screenshots were long outdated as an anti-cheat measure. The code posted in the article is extremely tame, it's amateur hour compared to what modern anticheats like EAC/BattlEye/Vanguard do, especially in competitive leagues.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#25

Post by robotnikman » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:21 AM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #9

eddiewithzato wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used x64dbg to crack some accounting software that went EOL and forced us to buy a new software based on a new subscription model. You can basically patch the executable to skip the function that locks you out

I recently saw that Roblox kids are trolling each other by putting "x64dbg" in their display names, because the game checks the window title of every running app and refuses to run if it sees that string anywhere :^)

That's actually pretty clever, and gave me a good laugh

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#26

Post by hypeatei » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:23 AM UTC

I know there's nothing that can or will happen about it (for various reasons) but the whole model around multiplayer games is flawed. You're giving someone code to run on their PC and hoping your anti-cheat code can catch their code doing bad things.

I believe there are AI anti-cheats being developed and used in China so maybe we'll end up with a Recall-esque anti-cheat everywhere in the future :)

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#27

Post by Dalewyn » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:26 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #22

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #13

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

I am not a fan of anti cheats, but I do like to play video games online and I want to be able to play fair games without cheaters. I am not sure what other options there are.

A locked down system, possibly including remote attestation if things get real bad, is the only realistic solution aside from game streaming which removes the hardware from the user's control altogether.

The freedom afforded in personal computing by Windows and Linux is fundamentally mutually exclusive to the security that multiplayer game operators and proper players legitimately need.

It's why game consoles and mobile gaming are the core gaming platforms. Note how Sony and Microsoft blacklist consoles suspected to be used by cheaters, and how games (and also banking) absolutely hate rooted smartphones because it breaks the assumption of a locked down and secured system.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#28

Post by Terr_ » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:27 AM UTC

google234123 wrote: post #2

> banning having reverse engineering tools open, or having used them recently on game files Seems like a smart way to catch inexperienced/up and coming cheat devs. How many non-cheat devs really have IDA on their gaming PC? I did and it was for developing cheats

Using a stupid/unreliable signal for lazy banning--like "is a developer tool installed"--is deeply unjust to a minority of users.

A less permanently-severe but real example: A Windows game which terminates (with no message) if the user opens "git bash" (cygwin).

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#29

Post by MenhirMike » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #22

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #13

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

I am not a fan of anti cheats, but I do like to play video games online and I want to be able to play fair games without cheaters. I am not sure what other options there are.

> I am not sure what other options there are.

Unironically, Cloud gaming. Stadia had a terrible business model, but the tech worked. Microsoft's XCloud together with GamePass could be a winning ticket for that. (I think there's also GeForce Now)

Of course, that wouldn't prevent anyone from capturing the screen, running image recognition software on the screen and sending USB Controller inputs to create an Aim Bot, but then again, that's not something anti-cheat software can stop these days anyway.

Re: Anti-Cheat Expert: all your pixels are belong to us

#30

Post by ndriscoll » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 1:31 AM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #19

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #13

A perk of gamimg on Linux is that none of these invasive anti-cheats work. I consider that a plus since I never care enough about a video game to surrender my privacy or my kernel over to it.

totally agree, but there are some things we just cant do. I bought Marauders to play with my son, and had maybe 4 months of excellent fun play with him. Then the dev's enabled EAC... now I cant play it anymore :-( I cant blame the mods, they never wrote the game to work on linux it was just a happy happenstance that i could use proton to play it before the EAC transition. Every game i have in my steam catalogue is at…

Why wouldn't you blame them? They should at least provide an option to turn it off like games used to. It looks like it's a co-op game; if you're playing with your friends/family why do you need anti-cheat?