We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger • Hacker News Board

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#341

Post by ultimafan » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #233

ultimafan wrote: post #76

Cheating in online games is a scourge and I really don't understand why people do it. It's one person selfishly getting a "win" at the expense of ~60 other people in that match having their time, pleasure, potentially money absolutely wasted. I think even more infuriating than blatant hacking is this epidemic of "micro cheating" for lack of a better way to put it that I've seen prevalent in some games that just boost…

In the case of CSGO, playing means earning lootboxes, and the items contained therein can be resold / auctioned off. It's the same problem as in Diablo 3 when it first launched, you could sell items found (randomly) in-game for real money. I read one guy's project, I'm sure it was posted on HN, who had 25 bots / copies of the game running to monitor the in-game currency market for deals, then resell those for real mo…

Do they need to cheat to get drops though? It's been a good while since I've played CSGO but I thought the drops there were similar to TF2 where you just get them on match end and it's not tied to player performance at all?

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#342

Post by xxs » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:01 PM UTC

consp wrote: post #251

xxs wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the fact that you are tracking "unique identifiers for the purpose of anti-cheating" A person can requests to delete their data at any time, and also can request to provide all the personal data collected.

This does not apply to fraud. You can store the data if it is relevant to an illegal act, and since cheating voids the ToS of the server ...

fraud is a criminal offense. ToS is in most cases is a wish-washy nonsense talk, legally not enforceable (in the EU)

It's rather hard to make any online agreement that's more lax than the law in the EU (and call it ToS)

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#343

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

leetbulb wrote: post #26

This isn't about stopping cheaters (cheat detection). This is about stopping repeat cheaters trying to ban evade. Detecting cheats, especially nowadays with hardware cheats (DMA, etc), is an entirely different ballgame. IMHO, one of the most effective way to stop ban evaders is to actually charge money for the game.

>IMHO, one of the most effective way to stop ban evaders is to actually charge money for the game.

Cheaters are NOT price sensitive. This is their preferred form of entertainment, ie being a king in their little kiddie pool, so they don't care to spend $60 every month on a new account/gamekey/whatever you charge them.

People in CS:GO are perfectly happy to be banned with hundreds of dollars of skins in an account, because they either spent like $5 getting someone else's compromised account, or they are paying $30 a month to a cheat service anyway.

I bet there is a shit ton of overlap between frequent cheaters and pay-to-win whales.

The reliable way to make people cheat in your game less is cheater honeypots. Instead of banning and just starting the hunt for a cheater all over again when they buy a new account, you silently force them into matchmaking with only other cheaters, purposely abusive bots, or artificially harming the cheater's gameplay like with fake lag, or just ignore keypresses sometimes. Ruin their fun and they will stop ruining your game. Then you turn the adverse knowledge game on them, they have to figure out if they are regularly playing with cheaters or bots in order to know they need to buy a new account.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#344

Post by TechDebtDevin » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #184

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many games have gone so far as to obfuscate the presence of hackers so that players are less likely to notice them (CoD)! How does CoD accomplish this, or other games that use similar strategies. I can't wrap my mind around how you could do this effectively while also not identifying hackers for the purpose of banning. Banning = Cheater buying another license to the game, I thought they like banning people for that…

One example I remember from CoD warzone is they've increased the number of in game 'wallhacks' available to players like UAVs and heartbeat sensors. So if you get killed by someone with wallhacks, it easy to tell yourself they were using the plethora of legitimate ways to be detected. It could just be a coincidence that these new features obscure a hackers visibility, but given the behavioral psychologist they have o…

Ahh, that makes sense. I actually refuse to play CoD and other games where kits/devices give you superpowers like this. Call me oldfashion but Counter Strike style competition, where everything is relatively balanced along the same curve more or less, is the only type of fps I can play.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#345

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #257

Would it be worth charging for CSGO? Or Counter-Strike 2, whatever the latest is? Because being banned by Steam ID might mean something if you have to pay $10 each time for the privilege.

Cheaters pay extra money to cheat. They are not price conscious consumers. They know what exactly they want (magic abilities in a specific playground) and are willing to pay to get it.

Price will never stop them, without at least gutting your legitimate market from being way too expensive.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#346

Post by TechDebtDevin » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

guappa wrote: post #247

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaters who spin don't care if they get caught. Its the closet cheaters you can't catch like this who's aim bot only locks on the head of someone when the cross hair its a certain amount of pixels from the head, or they set it to never lock on the head.

Or to autotrigger. That's how they do for backstabs in team fortress 2. Just go around and have it trigger immediately when it'd be an instant kill. Demomen on the other hand use an aimbot so they can hit you with those parabolic projectiles in the face, even if you're behind a wall and they can't see you at all.

>Demomen on the other hand use an aimbot so they can hit you with those parabolic projectiles in the face, even if you're behind a wall and they can't see you at all.

Hilarious, and shitty.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#347

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:14 PM UTC

smolder wrote: post #204

daghamm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating is also big business. Players can pay big bucks to rent (!) a cheat. IIRC there is an episode on darkness diaries podcast about this.

What a bunch of absolute losers. If it's taught me anything though, it's that you can't underestimate the pathologies of people you encounter 'in the real world'.

Remember that at all times we are surrounded with people who are such leaches on society that they won't even put away a grocery cart at a supermarket, instead leaving it in the middle of the parking lot because they are too important to take the time to push it five feet.

Something like 10% of people are just maximally assholes, no justification, no reason, no rationale, they genuinely think everybody else exists only for their benefit.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#348

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:20 PM UTC

runxel wrote: post #328

consp wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? It's effective and easy to do and while it can be circumvented it will stop some players with very little effort. Also, the article is about 2017/2018.

Because it is stupid, that's why. If only I had a dollar for every time I was blocked somewhere just because somebody else had used the IP just before me to do bad stuff. Worst offenders out there never clear the list, even. In a world of a shortage of IPv4 that approach is just madness. It's also the opposite of effective. More like bogus effectiveness. Only hurts innocent bystanders.

I have hard business data that shows, no, IP bans are still effective today, across millions and millions of people from all over the world. Using IP bans on bad actors helps immensely to block script kiddies and other low effort techniques, and forces more intelligent actors to pay for residential IP addresses to do their bullshit.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#349

Post by doctorpangloss » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

sfn42 wrote: post #265

doctorpangloss wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other games have an ID verified 3rd party system for competitive play (CSGO). Ha ha, you mean paying for the game and holding your Steam account as collateral?

Your steam account is unaffected by anti-cheat measures. Being banned (vac or otherwise) from CSGO does not prevent you from playing other games, nor from playing CSGO alone. The only trace of it is that your account profile will show that you have vac bans on record, but you don't have to show your profile.

> VAC bans prevent you from playing on secured servers across all of Steam.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/571A-97DA-70E9-FF...

> Q: Can I use bans in other games to block users from playing in my game?

> A: No. VAC and Game bans should only prevent the user from playing on VAC secured servers in the game they received a ban in. A permanent ban should only be issued for your game if the user was caught cheating in your game.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/webapi/ICheatReportingSer...

It's complicated. Valve has conflicting guidance on this. What is Valve's actual position? The 13 year olds who cheat also buy IAP. In their opinion, if there are a lot of cheaters, sell pay to win items.

Otherwise, the consensus is hellbanning, meaning putting all the cheaters together in a server, and VAC queries are used to achieve that.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#350

Post by sfn42 » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 6:43 PM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #349

sfn42 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your steam account is unaffected by anti-cheat measures. Being banned (vac or otherwise) from CSGO does not prevent you from playing other games, nor from playing CSGO alone. The only trace of it is that your account profile will show that you have vac bans on record, but you don't have to show your profile.

> VAC bans prevent you from playing on secured servers across all of Steam. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/571A-97DA-70E9-FF... > Q: Can I use bans in other games to block users from playing in my game? > A: No. VAC and Game bans should only prevent the user from playing on VAC secured servers in the game they received a ban in. A permanent ban should only be issued for your game if the user was caught ch…

I have 2 vac bans and they've never had any impact on anything other than the games I was banned from.

One was from letting my friend use my steam account, I wasn't using it and when I wanted to use it my password was changed and I had a vac ban in CS 1.6. He said it wasn't him, I'm not convinced.

The other was in Dungeon Defenders. The game had a confusing policy where you were allowed to cheat on the "Open" servers but not on "Ranked". You could copy your stuff from ranked to open, so I copied it and used cheat engine to test some things. Turned out you were only allowed to cheat using mods from the Steam Workshop or something like that, so I got vac banned.

Both bans are over 10 years old so things might have changed but I have never noticed any negative effects other than obviously I can't play DD or CS 1.6 online.