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Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

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Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#71

Post by titannet »

doubled112 wrote: post #23
dist-epoch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess then your computer does not have a form of Secure Boot enabled, and your drives are not encrypted. Makes sense, more secure.

I’m using Linux and LUKS but have never been convinced Secure Boot adds anything for me. It does sometimes add extra steps though, or block a driver from loading.

Secure Boot makes persisting malware in the kernel fairly difficult. Which IMHO made sense coming from Windows 7 where driver rootkits and boot kits where trivial. With today's main threat model being encryption malware I would agree that it doesn't add all that much for most people.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#73

Post by a1o »

thrownawaysz wrote: post #64
a1o wrote: post #61

Does anyone knows a good way to activate MS Office on macOS ? Doesn't matter how many times I buy the thing it eventually forgets the license and calling Microsoft Support usually doesn't result in anything. One day Office starts complaining that it's not activated and then it eventually locks me out of it. It would be nice if the Office license on macOS actually worked but if there's an easy solution for activation…

https://massgrave.dev/office_for_mac

Thank you!

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#76

Post by r2_pilot »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #48
doubled112 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my retail computer technician and sales days, it wasn’t uncommon for somebody to lose their Bitlocker keys, and encryption did what it was designed to do - make the data unreadable without them. Sometimes they didn’t even understand what they enabled. To that customer, Bitlocker itself was a threat. In my small sample size, I’ve seen that more often than lost laptops. I’ve also seen many more malware infectio…

> Does tying those keys to your MS account fix that failure method? Yes. Bitlocker recovery keys are escrowed to the Microsoft account. I've relied on this recover data from a family member's PC when it failed and they had unknowingly opted-in to Bitlocker (a Microsoft Surface Laptop running Windows 10 S Mode).

>> Does tying those keys to your MS account fix that failure method? >Yes. Bitlocker recovery keys are escrowed to the Microsoft account.

Which then opens the door to other attack vectors, even government.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#77

Post by brookst »

choo-t wrote: post #47
eezurr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go on steam and look at the recent reviews for older but still popular fps games. Gamers complain about cheaters constantly and will negatively review games cause of it

They're demanding a way to handle or ban cheater, not requiring TPM, that's a non sequitur.

[flagged]

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#78

Post by notdisliked »

Unai wrote: post #58
jnwatson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is that? It isn't for DRM (the game is free). It is for anti-cheat, and it is great. The libertarian maximalist i-can-do-what-i-want-with-my-computer ignore the many use cases where I want to trust something about someone else's computer, and trusted computing enables those use cases.

> It is for anti-cheat, and it is great. How is it great? Vanguard is extremely invasive; having kernel access, you have to relinquish your PC to this chinese-owned company at all times (whether you're playing the game or not), and just trust in their good faith. And for what? Cheaters are more rampant than ever, now that they have moved to DMA type cheats, which can't (and never will) be detected by Vanguard. So you…

I don’t think you can make the argument that the amount of cheaters using DMA is “just as many” as in a game with a less restrictive anti cheat, allowing cheaters to simply download a program off the internet and run it to acquire cheats. The accessibility of DMA cheats is meaningfully reduced to the point that I would guess (only conjecture here, sorry) the amount of cheaters is orders of magnitude less in an otherwise equivalent comparison.

Now, the amount of DMA cheaters may still be unacceptably high, but that’s a different statement than “the same amount as”.

So, it’s not “giving up something for nothing”, it’s giving up something for something, whether that something is adequate for the trade offs required will of course be subjective.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#79

Post by brookst »

realusername wrote: post #37
dist-epoch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me tell you a secret: it's because the gamers are demanding that. The game companies couldn't care less if there are cheaters in the game, but it's the players which put huge pressure on the game companies to detect and ban cheaters.

There's cheaters even on consoles which are vastly more locked-down than a PC. Those technical shenanigans clearly aren't working, be ready to be disappointed if you thought that a TPM would help against cheaters. Cheaters always find a way, what those game needs is proper moderation. Yes that does cost money but that's the only known thing that works in the long run.

This seems like the old “any imperfect solution is no better than doing nothing” argument. Moderation is expensive, hard to scale, and can only address problems after other users have bad experiences.

It’s like saying seatbelts are useless because some people still get hurt, so instead of seatbelts we need a lot more ambulances and hospitals.

Like any complex system, games have a funnel. These technical measures reduce (but not to zero) the number of cheaters. Then moderation can be more effective operating against a smaller population with a lower percentage of abuse.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#80

Post by mholm »

scotty79 wrote: post #46
dgellow wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do manual moderation on a massive fast-paced game like Valorant? It’s correct, that doesn’t scale

maybe not manual ... but ... log behavior, find outliers, make outliers play with outliers only

This absolutely happens already. The problem with finding statistical outliers is that plenty of legitimate players are outliers too. And if you're banning/segregating players for being outliers, you get a very angry player base.

Riot has a pretty indepth blogpost about their anti-cheat systems, they've had years to mature them on some of the most demanding competitive gaming platforms ever made. Requiring players install kernel anti-cheat was very far down the list of possible solutions, but that's what it came to. It was either this or stop being free to play.

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