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How to find exploits in video games

shalzuth.com

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Re: How to find exploits in video games

#31

Post by maeil »

memesarecool wrote: post #26
malkia wrote: post #18

I had a wonderful app MS-DOS resident (TSR) on my PC that when pressing a key would do a snapshot of the whole memory (or specific area) to disk, to a file. So if you play a game, and lose a live, or HP points, you keep on pressing this, and then there were tools to do the diff. There was one game that was storing the lifes as actual text - Ninja or something.... So last year my son was hacking some games, and nowada…

CheatEngine (80mb) is very widely used nowadays and does memory dumps and comparisons. A very useful tool not only for game reverse engineering.

That's a broad use of "nowadays", haha. Following step-by-step Cheat Engine tutorials to use game hacks (MapleStory and Gunbound) was my first brush with coding/system internals when I was a child. This must have been around 2006 and it was already the most popular tool back then, though I remember there were loads of forks to bypass what must have been primitive anticheat systems that scanned for whether Cheat Engine was running.

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#32

Post by johnisgood »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #29
shalzuth wrote: post #2

I wrote a short blog post about my thought process on how I reverse engineer video games and build tools that enable me to do security testing on them. It’s a bit brief on purpose, as reading the code is expected. Let me know your thoughts and what would make it better.

"build tools that enable me to do security testing on them" I gather you write cheat exploits... and if public... eventually the players account/GPU/IMEI risks getting permanently banned/flagged. It is always easier to break something, than to build something stable. People may focus resources on better content, game-play, and performance. Or play wack-a-mole with hostile Desktop/Mobile users... Thus, some folks won'…

Yeah and you end up with one of the worst client-server architectures that RDR2 has.

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#35

Post by Joel_Mckay »

johnisgood wrote: post #32
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"build tools that enable me to do security testing on them" I gather you write cheat exploits... and if public... eventually the players account/GPU/IMEI risks getting permanently banned/flagged. It is always easier to break something, than to build something stable. People may focus resources on better content, game-play, and performance. Or play wack-a-mole with hostile Desktop/Mobile users... Thus, some folks won'…

Yeah and you end up with one of the worst client-server architectures that RDR2 has.

"client-server architectures"

Actually, public-key-signed object-p2p exchange systems allow for all sorts of fun. Even if people fiddle with the state exchange, the time+last_event indices can flag lag switchers, and signature audits detect memory patchers...

My point was, one doesn't need to lock the door if you own a alligator farm. =3

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#36

Post by njbooher »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #29
shalzuth wrote: post #2

I wrote a short blog post about my thought process on how I reverse engineer video games and build tools that enable me to do security testing on them. It’s a bit brief on purpose, as reading the code is expected. Let me know your thoughts and what would make it better.

"build tools that enable me to do security testing on them" I gather you write cheat exploits... and if public... eventually the players account/GPU/IMEI risks getting permanently banned/flagged. It is always easier to break something, than to build something stable. People may focus resources on better content, game-play, and performance. Or play wack-a-mole with hostile Desktop/Mobile users... Thus, some folks won'…

As someone who does security testing for video game service backends, I benefit significantly from all the reverse engineering and tools the hobbyists and cheaters build, and always enjoy reading more stuff.

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#38

Post by Joel_Mckay »

njbooher wrote: post #36
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"build tools that enable me to do security testing on them" I gather you write cheat exploits... and if public... eventually the players account/GPU/IMEI risks getting permanently banned/flagged. It is always easier to break something, than to build something stable. People may focus resources on better content, game-play, and performance. Or play wack-a-mole with hostile Desktop/Mobile users... Thus, some folks won'…

As someone who does security testing for video game service backends, I benefit significantly from all the reverse engineering and tools the hobbyists and cheaters build, and always enjoy reading more stuff.

Unfortunately, most security research boils down to 18/23 classes of problem that haven't changed in 30 years, or human behavior which hasn't significantly altered in thousands of years.

Indeed, the secure machines were not as popular as cheap consumer solutions, and despotic political posturing. =3

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#39

Post by [deleted] »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #38
njbooher wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does security testing for video game service backends, I benefit significantly from all the reverse engineering and tools the hobbyists and cheaters build, and always enjoy reading more stuff.

Unfortunately, most security research boils down to 18/23 classes of problem that haven't changed in 30 years, or human behavior which hasn't significantly altered in thousands of years. Indeed, the secure machines were not as popular as cheap consumer solutions, and despotic political posturing. =3

[deleted]
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