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Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

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Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#61

Post by john_strinlai »

Rohansi wrote: post #55
john_strinlai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anti-cheat is not perfect. they will brick a legitimate user's pc. that is the opposite of "good for their players". and even if someone is cheating on a riot game, bricking their pc is obviously fucked, and will end up biting riot in the ass (i.e. not good for riot, either).

Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have.

>Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs?

the one we're talking about, where riot tweeted "congrats on your $6k paperweights".

>The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have.

you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else, and apparently riot will still gladly brick your pc.

you apparently don't even need the games currently installed! if you have vanguard leftover from months ago when you did play, remove all the games, and then decide to tinker around with dma for fun/learning/who cares, riot will still come after you, despite not even playing their games.

even if that seems unlikely, refer back to sentence #2 of my comment: "and even if someone is cheating on a riot game, bricking their pc is obviously fucked, and will end up biting riot in the ass (i.e. not good for riot, either)."

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#63

Post by macintux »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #12

Surprised this or malicious games and updates hasn't happened sooner.

I remember, ~20 years ago, there was some free Christmas elf game (Flash?) that went viral and everyone was playing it. Struck me as a perfect vector for malware, I was a little surprised that didn’t happen.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#64

Post by matheusmoreira »

nekzn wrote: post #50
mschuster91 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Riot Games just today (!) admitted to hard-bricking cheating hardware [1]. This kind of stuff definitely is malware, and your comment aged like milk. [1] https://videocardz.com/newz/riot-games-on-valorant-dma-cheat...

You are confusing drm with anti cheats. In any case, good for Riot, and good especially for their players!

No confusion at all. Same unacceptable "we own your machine now" nonsense.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#65

Post by unethical_ban »

zufallsheld wrote: post #58
sophrosyne42 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it was foolish to give a new name to it. It was originally called Wine Is Not an Emulator.

It's not a new name. Proton is Valve's fork of wine. They also contribute patches to wine.

I think their point is proton is not an emulator.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#66

Post by fwip »

mschuster91 wrote: post #35
nekzn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"drm is malware" is so 2005.

Well, Riot Games just today (!) admitted to hard-bricking cheating hardware [1]. This kind of stuff definitely is malware, and your comment aged like milk. [1] https://videocardz.com/newz/riot-games-on-valorant-dma-cheat...

It's not a hard-brick. Reinstalling Windows fixes it.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#67

Post by blueg3 »

devmor wrote: post #56
blueg3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly could. Buying a better GPU improves your graphics performance and that's basically unrelated to the area where a sandbox impacts performance. Killing your web browser is probably just lowering memory pressure? Sandboxes add overhead to syscalls. It's kind of similar to running under Wine, which also adds significant syscalls overhead. Wine also has a much more impactful DirectX translation layer, so your…

> your sandbox performance would be probably be much better than the Wine performance. That’s hard to believe, given that many games run better under WINE than native Windows.

AIUI, this is relatively rare, and is because of DXVK on games that use old DirectX APIs.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#68

Post by jasomill »

blueg3 wrote: post #39
pjc50 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC games tend to be the reverse: they demand control over the machine, in order to try to detect or prevent being run alongside various forms of cheating software. They also need low-latency access to the GPU, which I suspect is a fertile vector for privilege escape exploits.

Only a relatively small (but popular) subset of games use anticheat. Most games -- including the one in this article -- could theoretically run in a sandbox.

Even games with strong anticheat could benefit from sandboxing, as the anticheat mechanisms that need access outside the sandbox represent a much smaller surface area for exploits than the entire game.

In theory, sandboxing mechanisms could even be used to improve anticheat.

What I always sort of assume the endgame could be for highly competitive Windows games is something akin to cartridge or bootable floppy games from the 8-bit era, where games would install into or be supplied as disk images containing locked-down Windows installations that only permit signed (and possibly whitelisted) drivers and whitelisted applications, which would include the game and a small number of other approved applications like Discord, MS Edge and possibly selected third-party browsers, and support software for hardware like GPUs and gaming input devices, which Windows would then boot to run the game, either on bare metal or in an isolated VM.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#69

Post by Rohansi »

john_strinlai wrote: post #61
Rohansi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have.

> Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? the one we're talking about, where riot tweeted "congrats on your $6k paperweights". > The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have. you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else, and apparently riot will still gladly brick your pc. you apparently don't even need the games currently i…

Where does it say Riot bricked anything? They referred to the cards as paperweights but they don't need to be bricked to be a paperweight, being useless to the cheater due to Vanguard protections is enough. They definitely didn't brick anyone's PC.

> you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else

I don't think there's a way to check what memory a DMA card is accessing. I also don't see why legitimate users would have a DMA card. I think it's fair for them to assume a connection is there and react.

Re: Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware

#70

Post by john_strinlai »

Rohansi wrote: post #69
john_strinlai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? the one we're talking about, where riot tweeted "congrats on your $6k paperweights". > The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have. you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else, and apparently riot will still gladly brick your pc. you apparently don't even need the games currently i…

Where does it say Riot bricked anything? They referred to the cards as paperweights but they don't need to be bricked to be a paperweight, being useless to the cheater due to Vanguard protections is enough. They definitely didn't brick anyone's PC. > you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else I don't think there's a way to check what memory a DMA card is accessing. I also don't see why…

>They referred to the cards as paperweights

DMA cards are not $6k, so it is obvious that riot is not talking about the DMA card specifically. they are ~$300 - ~$700. the image they tweeted alongside was that of broken computers, not of broken DMA cards.

i am not sure why riot would admit to bricking $6k PCs if they werent. that would also be exceptionally stupid.

admittedly, the more i look into it, it appears the reports are soft-bricking (i.e., requiring a complete wipe and reinstallation of the OS, not hard-bricking). which is less awful, but still really awful.

>I also don't see why legitimate users would have a DMA card.

doesn't matter at all. if its not being used to interact with riot games, its none of riot's business and not on riot to determine the legitimacy of owning one.

>I think it's fair for them to assume a connection is there and react.

i think this is a wild take. this is effectively giving ownership of your software and hardware to riot.

if the reaction was simply to ban you from riot servers and games, sure, i could be convinced that's acceptable. but the reaction is beyond that.

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