Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#531

Post by kulahan » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:34 PM UTC

Levitating wrote: post #229

kulahan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait to find out what China hid in Riot's Vanguard rootkit for all their games. It's 100% a conspiracy theory, but nobody can convince me it's perfectly clean, or if it is, that there isn't an easy way to add some power to it quietly.

The vanguard drivers are signed by Microsoft, the procedure for which includes a safety audit by Microsoft. The driver is just what the developers say it is (as with all other anti-cheat). It provides an untempered interface for the userland anti-cheat to use to get info from the kernel. Because modern cheats tend to alter the output of kernel syscalls by running in the kernel themselves. I really don't see why anyon…

The level of sophistication that can go into a hack when sponsored by a nation-state is incredible. Just remember Stuxnet all the way back in '06 or whatever it was. Tech was a lot less advanced nearly two decades ago. It's not right, imo, to leave your safety up to this process.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#532

Post by aenis » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:39 PM UTC

declan_roberts wrote: post #323

WatchDog wrote: post #320

With the way that computer vision and AI continue to improve, I imagine that we will soon have completely external and undetectable cheating peripherals, simply capture the screen direct from the display output, and pass inputs via mimicking a usb human input device. This won’t provide all the same capabilities as cheats that hook into the game process, such as wall hacks, but it would be possible to build a super hu…

That kind of stuff is readily available right now with openCV. Image detection has been very good and very fast for a long time! Nobody really cares because most players are honest and play to have fun.

But why bother with image recognition? And pay a heavy latency penalty which makes it difficult to implement PID-style controls on player's aim? Its a game of milliseconds and opencv is comparably slow, as is the I/O involved.

Far easier to do a MiTM on the network traffic and recreate state in another process.

Still easier to clone memory pages used by the target app, or use hardware that allows dma.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#533

Post by tl » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:41 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #500

BoorishBears wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously asking me how getting killed by someone cheating to know exactly where you are feels different than just being outplayed?

Actually yes. If you've never been falsely accused of cheating in an online game by people who can't tell the difference between that and getting outplayed, chances are you haven't played any multiplayer games long enough to get any good at them.

The only real answer for this is self-imposed handicaps.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#534

Post by jakebasile » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:44 PM UTC

wrren wrote: post #491

ho_schi wrote: post #404

First step. Second step? Ban games with kernel-level anti-cheat. It is not acceptable on Linux. Apple will also not accept that shit further, that said Apple lost relevance in gaming with Mantle and the M-Processors (both mean a lot of incompatibility). And Microsoft is regretting every choice in this regard: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24242947/microsoft-window... But that is a usual pattern. Microsoft makes…

That's an incredibly naive perspective. KLA represents a real risk to companies, as something going wrong can crash player computers instead of just game processes; this is a PR nightmare if/when it happens on a large scale. Not to mention the cost of hiring engineers capable of building kernel components in the first place, it's a niche skillset that's not cheap to hire for. Games companies don't turn to KLA out of…

We had the best alternative decades ago. Let the community run the servers and ban cheaters while allowing individual servers to form their own culture and community. The obsession with matchmaking and games as a service (requiring publisher run servers) is what painted the industry into this corner.

Note that I like matchmaking, specifically skill based matchmaking, in some games and at some times but completely ending server browsers and community run dedicated servers was a mistake.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#535

Post by steelframe » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:48 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #371

steelframe wrote: post #278

I built a separate Arch Linux box just for Steam gaming. I will never log into any of my sensitive accounts -- email, banking, etc. -- on that machine. It's a Framework laptop so I can physically keep the camera and microphone disconnected. I basically treat it like a public terminal.

Do you truly expect any steam games to have anything like a root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials? I feel if this were the case literally anything I install on my PC would be suspect. Installing ssh would be a much more scary thing than a random steam game.

> root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials

Yes. I truly believe some janky random anti-cheat kernel module could very well capture telemetry about my keystrokes to a log and then send that log off to a server.

At the very least I don't trust that it's secure enough to be in the kernel of a machine for which I require any degree of trust in its integrity.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#536

Post by wing-_-nuts » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:49 PM UTC

NeoTar wrote: post #517

soderfoo wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's just me being an idealist and projecting. I acknowledge what the analytics show, but always allude to the hypothetical casual loner segment who we lack data on because we pushed them away or we don't measure things relevant to them. I'm a boomer millenial , or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment. Casual loners are irrelevant to the monetization and in gam…

> I'm a boomer millenial, or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment. And you are not alone - apparently 53% of gamers (total) prefer single-player games, [although this falls to only 30% in the 16-19 years age-group]. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/most-gamers-prefer-single... I wonder how much of this is familiarity (i.e. I play games in the style I did when I was…

Part of it is reflexes too. I used to love fast paced FPS games as a teen and was actually pretty good at them until my early 30's. As time went on, I started noticing I was doing consistently worse in 1v1 firefights. I started gravitating towards games that had a 'slower' way to contribute like playing vehicles in the battlefield series.

As time goes on I've gotten more and more into single player games, especially games that let me build stuff.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#537

Post by notabee » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

generalpf wrote: post #396

pixxel wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve just got Sony watching over you and transcribing your audio conversations with friends.

“Shoot that guy” “Ok” Super valuable stuff.

Or more likely, listening to background noise to spy on what family members are saying and listening for marketing/brand trigger words. It may not be very human audible but if it's machine audible it will probably be scraped.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#538

Post by gnuser » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:55 PM UTC

Im annoyed at all the servile responses in defense of these bad companies.

Wanna hear my conspiracy theory?

Three letter agencies are using games as an intel gathering tool, and KLA is part of that. What if the CEOs are getting NSLs, etc?

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#539

Post by MetaWhirledPeas » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:56 PM UTC

musjleman wrote: post #337

WatchDog wrote: post #320

With the way that computer vision and AI continue to improve, I imagine that we will soon have completely external and undetectable cheating peripherals, simply capture the screen direct from the display output, and pass inputs via mimicking a usb human input device. This won’t provide all the same capabilities as cheats that hook into the game process, such as wall hacks, but it would be possible to build a super hu…

> With the way that computer vision and AI continue to improve, I imagine that we will soon have completely external and undetectable cheating peripherals, simply capture the screen direct from the display output, and pass inputs via mimicking a usb human input device. This already exists. You can stream your screen to another machine running image recognition and pass your mouse input through a controller that injec…

> However, it is very important to understand that only a tiny percentage of cheaters in games end up being determined enough to go through hoops to purchase hardware for it

Today. That will change when it's a cheap off-the-shelf product sold on Amazon. I almost wish we were there already to get rid of this KLA nonsense.

Not to mention, every KLA game I've played has had cheaters regardless. Circumventing the software seems to become a game unto itself for those people.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#540

Post by dingnuts » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:57 PM UTC

NeoTar wrote: post #517

soderfoo wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's just me being an idealist and projecting. I acknowledge what the analytics show, but always allude to the hypothetical casual loner segment who we lack data on because we pushed them away or we don't measure things relevant to them. I'm a boomer millenial , or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment. Casual loners are irrelevant to the monetization and in gam…

> I'm a boomer millenial, or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment. And you are not alone - apparently 53% of gamers (total) prefer single-player games, [although this falls to only 30% in the 16-19 years age-group]. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/most-gamers-prefer-single... I wonder how much of this is familiarity (i.e. I play games in the style I did when I was…

REAL-TIME multiplayer is worse for that use case. There's no reason a game that is asynchronous, like an old school play by mail game, couldn't be fun for twenty minutes when you have time, and maybe there's a limit or a turn involved so you don't get too ahead, and your partner does their thing when they get time

I have wanted to see a game like that for years and years. I think this is why chess.com is huge with the youths, as it fits my description and is fairly unique -- I just don't personally care for chess.