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Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

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Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#211

Post by astrange »

fuj wrote: post #40
Arnavion wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows drivers can be loaded and unloaded dynamically, yes. It's also possible that they're using "shut down" semantically and not literally, in that the driver is loaded but inactive while the game isn't running.

Isn't this the case for every major OS? I know FreeBSD device drivers can be (un)loaded on-the-fly. Same for MacOS. I assume it's also possible in Linux(?)

macOS doesn't let you load kexts anymore since it's less important with drivers moving to userspace.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#212

Post by nmfisher »

cletus wrote: post #176
xerxes901 wrote: post #154

The whole "super intrusive anti-cheat" thing is really annoying to me as a non-competitive player, who just plays games like CoD, CS, etc occasionally with friends. And not just academically annoying, but practically too. I used to run Windows virtualised under Linux with a PCIe passthrough GPU. I remember having to re-install windows directly on my machine at a LAN party once because CS:GO couldn't be run in a VM an…

This isn't a high-level gameplay problem. I'm not sure what you play but in (CoD) Warzone, for example, just based on Twitch streams at least, almost every lobby has one or more cheaters/hackers in it now. This is a bad enough problem that it actually threatens the integrity of the game and the continued support from more casual gamers such as yourself. As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU…

> As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU passthrough), that's... such a niche corner case that you're you just don't factor in.

I'm not saying it's not niche (it definitely is), but I just wanted to chime in and say I'm another one who does this.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#213

Post by Natsu »

xerxes901 wrote: post #184
cletus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a high-level gameplay problem. I'm not sure what you play but in (CoD) Warzone, for example, just based on Twitch streams at least, almost every lobby has one or more cheaters/hackers in it now. This is a bad enough problem that it actually threatens the integrity of the game and the continued support from more casual gamers such as yourself. As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU…

I think my suggestion handles this situation though. If the cheaters are playing well enough that you can identify them as cheaters, then they would be getting flagged by my hypothetical server-side anticheat as "good" and so need to run the client-side software too. Also I don't think "twitch streams" are a great sample of "normal level gameplay", most people there would be ranked comparatively highly in MMR I would…

I feel like showing things like replays of the kill cam can help with this sort of thing. That should make things like wallhacks more obvious as they get flagged by other players.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#214

Post by nemothekid »

stefan_ wrote: post #9
DizzyDoo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I write a cheat for your game that operates on the kernel level, how would you detect it from the game that runs in user space?

Yes, it's an impossible fight. Give up early and just detect the supernatural aim server-side or have a working report system.

1. Not all cheats are aimbots. In a game like Warzone where you are playing with 99 other plays, wallhacks are a very valuable cheat. There are server side mitigations, but they aren't perfect in very situation

2. Ideally you want to prevent cheaters from playing a single game. Reporting cheaters does nothing as legitimate customers still have to deal with cheaters and cheaters will just make new accounts.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#216

Post by KennyBlanken »

xerxes901 wrote: post #184
cletus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a high-level gameplay problem. I'm not sure what you play but in (CoD) Warzone, for example, just based on Twitch streams at least, almost every lobby has one or more cheaters/hackers in it now. This is a bad enough problem that it actually threatens the integrity of the game and the continued support from more casual gamers such as yourself. As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU…

I think my suggestion handles this situation though. If the cheaters are playing well enough that you can identify them as cheaters, then they would be getting flagged by my hypothetical server-side anticheat as "good" and so need to run the client-side software too. Also I don't think "twitch streams" are a great sample of "normal level gameplay", most people there would be ranked comparatively highly in MMR I would…

I agree that matchmaking would be a factor if it were purely designed to create fair matches with an infinite number of available players would match cheaters against very good players, and the # of players vs skill level was fairly linear.

But limitations in available players in the queue (especially as skill goes up), "experience optimized" matchmaking (which psychologically manipulates you into playing more by feeding you wins and losses at the right time)...I'm not so sure.

I used to spend a significant amount of time playing a tactical shooter type game, and what I figured out was that the game would purposefully throw you soft games and hard games, especially when first partying up with people on your friend list.

One of the developers of the game publicly disclosed that their matchmaking algorithm took several dozen games to figure out how good you were. I tried creating a new account, and it took a very long time before I stopped being given opponents who could barely move, whereas I'm dodge-rolling, using my character's ult, using grenades, etc. It was so bad, I felt terrible and stopped using the secondary account. So cheaters (who keep creating new accounts) probably enjoy plenty of playtime. There were multiple cases of obvious cheaters running around achieving relatively high account levels, showing that anti-cheat measures took a long time to kick in.

Lastly: the anti-cheat software available for this relatively small game was incredibly sophisticated. Sure, you could set the hitbox detection and zero fuzz and go for all headshots, but that would make you jump off the page stats-wise, you're right. As long as you weren't super greedy, you could probably "on paper" look like just a fairly skilled player.

The other problem? The game had verystrong controller assist. So much so that many pro players abandoned the game fairly early on. It was very difficult to tell the difference between someone cheating and someone who was just good at controller play, because controller aim assist is intended to help casual players compete against MNK players. It's not intended to help very skilled controller users, who will absolutely decimate MNK players in a lot of types of gunfights (particularly close range stuff.)

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#217

Post by KennyBlanken »

somerando7 wrote: post #201
xerxes901 wrote: post #154

The whole "super intrusive anti-cheat" thing is really annoying to me as a non-competitive player, who just plays games like CoD, CS, etc occasionally with friends. And not just academically annoying, but practically too. I used to run Windows virtualised under Linux with a PCIe passthrough GPU. I remember having to re-install windows directly on my machine at a LAN party once because CS:GO couldn't be run in a VM an…

Server-side anticheat catches no cheaters...? What is even the point of developing it lol

Hint: game companies don't actually give a shit about cheaters, especially if they're giving them money.

The only point at which a company cares about cheaters is when the community starts to really get riled up about them and revenue drops.

COD Warzone has a full stats API and cheaters leap off the page. We're talking people with K/D ratios of, say, 10-20:1 or more. All they'd have to do is zap or flag those accounts automatically. But they don't care.

Just about any sort of public online game involving shooting has long stopped being fun for me because cheating is so rampant and blatant, and companies care more about policing talk on their discords and subreddits about problems with cheaters, than they do about addressing the cheaters.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#218

Post by justinlloyd »

Client-side anti-cheat is pointless, it just captures the low hanging fruit.

Kernel level drivers are also kind of useless, easy to circumvent, easy to reverse engineer.

Building a capable computer vision bot that can play World of Warcraft, Diablo and CS:GO is trivially easy to do these days. We're talking a few hundred lines of Python to build a working prototype that will track and kill and take objectives.

I have a computer vision Diablo 3 bot of less than 2,000 lines of Python that can run Rifts and and grind high level Grifts with complete success, including boss encounters and adds.

My World of Warcraft computer vision bot, long since retired, was under 8,000 lines and was sophisticated enough to get me some contract work with Blizzard to write machine learning algorithms to hunt for bots in the game world.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#220

Post by [deleted] »

nmfisher wrote: post #212
cletus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a high-level gameplay problem. I'm not sure what you play but in (CoD) Warzone, for example, just based on Twitch streams at least, almost every lobby has one or more cheaters/hackers in it now. This is a bad enough problem that it actually threatens the integrity of the game and the continued support from more casual gamers such as yourself. As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU…

> As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU passthrough), that's... such a niche corner case that you're you just don't factor in. I'm not saying it's not niche (it definitely is), but I just wanted to chime in and say I'm another one who does this.

[deleted]
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