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Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

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Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#81

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jnwatson wrote: post #41
nulld3v wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can recognize that app/game developers are starting to require Secure Boot enforcement if you want to continue to use their apps or play their games. RIOT requires users to enable TPM-enforced Secure Boot starting with Windows 11 to play Valorant: https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/100...

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.

Is it so radical to want to be in control of your stuff? What are these use cases where we need to have third parties in control?

I don't really buy the gaming one, in every other domain where a community of people are gathering to do a thing they enjoy together it's on the community and not the tool maker to figure out how to avoid bad behavior. If you don't wanna play with cheaters then just play with somebody else.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#82

Post by choo-t »

brookst wrote: post #77
choo-t wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

You cannot "prevent" cheating, you can at best mitigate it, it's a balance.

There plenty of way to mitigate cheating in game, but the game industry is focusing on the ones where they don't bear the cost and only the customer will (and this view is in part due to the model of F2P games, where banning cheater is useless as it doesn't cost them anything to create a new account).

Letting game developer having complete control and spying on the device playing the game is fine in a physical tournament were they provide the device, but it's insanity when it's the user own device in its home.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#83

Post by AshamedCaptain »

titannet wrote: post #71
doubled112 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It really doesn't prevent anything like that, not even remotely. First, to do any type of persistence that would be detected by Secure Boot, you already require unencrypted, block-level access to the disk drive, possibly even to partitions outside the system drive. There are a gazillion other ways that malware can persist if you already have this level of access and none would be detected by Secure Boot. If you were able to tamper with the kernel enough to do this in the first place, you can likely do it on each boot even if launched from a "plain old" service.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#84

Post by choo-t »

RHSeeger wrote: post #70
choo-t wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're being disingenuous here, or just missing the point. The point being made was the gamers are demanding game developers stop cheaters... and that secure boot (and related ways to lock down the computer) is one of the primary tools they know to use to do that.

> The point being made was the gamers are demanding game developers stop cheaters... and that secure boot (and related ways to lock down the computer) is one of the primary tools they know to use to do that.

That's akin to saying that, as people want security on the street, mandatory strip search as soon as your exit your home is fair game.

Asking for a result doesn't give a blank-check for all the measures taken toward this result.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#85

Post by miles »

a1o wrote: post #53
thrownawaysz wrote: post #31

MAS (which is also hosted on Github) is the perfect example of Microsoft not caring about end user piracy. Just use it.

I have no idea how to get access to LTSC Windows without it. I have bought Windows PRO keys in case someone asks one day, but as a person, I really don't know how to get the not annoying Windows that is available for companies.

I did a little writeup[1] back in 2018 about how to acquire Windows 10 LTSC as an individual. It was only around $300, which included the required four additional CALs.

By way of comparison, Windows 11 Pro is $200[2].

[1] https://tinyapps.org/blog/201811300700_windows_10_ltsc.html

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#86

Post by layer8 »

croes wrote: post #13
dist-epoch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying that for more than 10 years now, since the TPM was introduced. Yet you can still install Linux on PCs sold with Windows, you can still install third party software on Windows not from a Store, you can still watch pirated movies downloaded from torrents. You can even run an unregistered/unpaid version of Windows if you don't mind that it will not let you change the desktop background image.

And Windows PCs are still not safe. So either way it fails it's purpose

More accurately, unbreakable security as enabled by hardware TPMs also enables unbreakable vendor lock-in like we have with iOS. Pick your poison.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#87

Post by user_7832 »

brookst wrote: post #77
choo-t wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

> There is no technical way to prevent cheating in advance without secure boot.

I'm not really sure I buy this. I can't really give a way that can guarantee no cheating but I know for example games like Genshin Impact run almost all the code (dmg calculation etc) server-side. Perhaps something that's an extension of Geforce Now might be the best "anti-cheat" technically speaking.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#88

Post by realusername »

brookst wrote: post #79
realusername wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 redu…

Since the technical measures like TPM are very heavy, there's some better evidence needed that it reduces the number of cheaters, personally I don't buy it.

On the other hand, all the games / servers I've seen which are successful against cheater have some very good moderation.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#89

Post by Unai »

notdisliked wrote: post #78
Unai wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 otherw…

Yeah, valid point.

You're right, a game with no anti-cheat or a bad one will have more cheaters. But as you said, it's about the tradeoff, and that's what isn't "great". It was for a period of two years or so, since the tradeoff was "lose all control of your PC by installing a rootkit, play a game completely free of cheats", which was compelling, but now that the game isn't sterile anymore it's hardly worth it, at least for me.

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