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Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

areweanticheatyet.com

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Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#31

Post by cdogl »

sadeshmukh wrote: post #22
Animats wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? There are two issues. One is the user seeing things that the server is hiding, such as enemies hidden behind obstacles, by going into "wireframe mode". The other is superhuman performance via computer assistance, or "aimbot hacks". The first is a performance issue. The server can do some occlusion culling to avoid t…

The only feasible solution is to have high-level players compete in physical tournaments or at verified centers, where the authenticity of the player is replaced with some authority. At a high enough level, there is no way to distinguish a really good player from a cheater.

Competitive games are unlikely to reach the market share necessary for a competitive gaming tournament if their casual scene is inundated with cheaters. Only a tiny handful of games even have a viable competitive scene.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#32

Post by Xeamek »

mjevans wrote: post #8
claudex wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The client need to have more state info than the player to render accurately, for example, to render an opponent passing through a window without lag. And also, there are also cheat that doesn't need to spy on the state, like aim assist tool or HUD improvement.

* Pass through a window without lag - That's why the server is sending multiple copies of potential movements and paths through the level for each character, but terminating the ones that are about to reveal their effects (no longer be culled by walls / objects) when they'd send false information to non-cheating players. * Aim Assist - what's that supposed to work with for the assist? I guess it might help someone ta…

You can render all the scenarios in the world, but ultimately You have to tell the client which on is correct.

And this will always be simply too slow for fast paced games.

Unless ofcourse you send the confirmation to frames before its actually displayed, but that brings us to square one

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#33

Post by retrochameleon »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #13
mjevans wrote: post #2

I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy…

oh dang you should be a multiplayer engineer. Sounds like with barely even thinking about the problem space you've solved what thousands of extremely talented and knowledgeable engineers never could! Servers very much distrust the client. Obviously. That's literally rule #1. Don't trust the client! Comments like yours are extremely irritating. Please don't behave this way with your co-workers. Anyhow, there's all kin…

For all your bluster you didn't even share an example where client-distrust would be inadequate.

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#34

Post by perillamint »

rpgwaiter wrote: post #29
Animats wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? There are two issues. One is the user seeing things that the server is hiding, such as enemies hidden behind obstacles, by going into "wireframe mode". The other is superhuman performance via computer assistance, or "aimbot hacks". The first is a performance issue. The server can do some occlusion culling to avoid t…

I’m big into competitive Call of Duty. On that game (and any other shooter that uses a controller), the biggest undetectable cheat is auto recoil adjust. People call it a “chronus” for the same reason people call it Kleenex. You download profiles for the gun you're using and it basically does the recoil pattern in reverse, turning every gun into a laser beam. It’s undetectable because it modifies inputs from a legit…

I don't think it will work. Nothing can prohibit users from desolder the stick and putting a microprocessor with DAC in place of them.

Actually, those kinds of mod is frequently performed by gamers, because lots of people wants to replace analogue potentiometer with hall-effect sensor with microprocessor, which provides much more durability compared to the Alps potentiometer stick. (and no one likes to play with a drifting Dualsense or Joy-Con)

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#36

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

TheFragenTaken wrote: post #9
mjevans wrote: post #2

I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy…

The first rule in any software backed by a server, but especially multiplayer games is, you never trust the client. You could have a perfectly deterministic game where every action is validated on the server, be defeated by running the game at half speed.

A bullet-time video game, you say?

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#37

Post by psgdev »

mjevans wrote: post #2

I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy…

Sending copies of fake character data isn't a thing because there eventually has to be a flag that tells the client to not render that character that the client hack could simply read.

It should be clear that servers already do not trust the client, they do many checks hence you don't see teleportation hacks in games like Counter strike or Valorant. There used to be cheats in the counter strike games like "nospread" where you could have 100% pixel perfect aiming but that was because the the client was trusted however now in most games with some randomness in bullet spray patterns the random seed is different between the client and server so something like "nospread" are no longer possible.

You might be stumbling upon "fog of war" that is not sending data to a client unless the enemy player is close to visible which is a thing. It's widely used and I'd say effective in MOBA/MMORPG/RTS games however in FPS games fog of war is many times more computationally expensive which matters at the scale of games these days. It has been a thing for a long time in counter strike with server plugins like "SMAC anti wall hack" or "server side occlusion culling" however the implementations sometimes have not been perfect and require significantly stronger servers. https://github.com/87andrewh/CornerCullingSourceEngine

Riot games also implements fog of war at scale in Valorant and has a blog post covering some of the issues they overcame. One thing you can see the gif at the end of the blog post, even though fog of war is effective it is only effective in reducing the effectiveness of wall hacks and wall hacks still provide a significant advantage. https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-...

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#38

Post by qalmakka »

leaving aside that most anticheats are useless and constantly teetering on the thin line between legitimate software and malware, not enabling anti-cheat solutions that support Linux on Linux is really an asshole move that almost definitely stems from an unmotivated or ideological hostility to Linux in general (I'm specifically referring to Tim Sweeney here).

Re: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

#40

Post by mjevans »

dijit wrote: post #26
mjevans wrote: post #2

I don't know enough about 'real time' netcode for games. However I have read several HN articles over the years so I've got at least a basic understanding. Why can't the servers distrust the clients? What should a 'client side anti cheat' actually prevent? The way I think I'd tackle such things is to have multiple copies of each character model moving in different locations and different ways. Such that trying to spy…

Delaying UI interaction until it has been verified by a server that runs at 20fps (60 is uncommon on servers unless theres no AI), with a RTT of 60 ms, means your hitmarker will take 110ms instead of 6ms if rendered locally. Apply that to every interaction that the server has to be authoritative about, movement, reloading. Your game will be unplayable. And if you want to combat aimbotting: your viewport and hit point…

Not delaying UI interaction; though conflict resolution (there are at least two involved clients, each with it's own lagged view of the other, and a server that knows it's own truth) might change the outcome of events. THAT is the part of multiplayer net code I know the least about, mostly because I don't think there is a perfect solution but I am not a subject expert on what works well as an approximation.
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