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Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

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Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#91

Post by ryx »

Tepix wrote: post #56

So, just stating the obvious, you can now (¥) download all xbox games directly from the microsoft store for free? I.e. the xbox is - for now - as completely hacked as the PS Vita? (¥) you might have to figure out some details

Yep. This seems to be the most overlooked part of the article, although maybe the most interesting.

Unfortunately not for anyone who has activated the auto-update feature on his/her Xbox, as the latest system software version seems to include a higher kernel version than supported by the collateral-damage exploit.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#92

Post by choo-t »

mholm wrote: post #80
scotty79 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

The server is all-seeing, if there is no way for the server to discriminate cheater from other player, then no player can possibly know there a cheater on the server, thus cannot complain about cheating is either irrational or the server-side detection is severely flawed.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#93

Post by libertine »

23B1 wrote: post #59
libertine wrote: post #6

This sort of thing over decades has been the best distribution and communication channel for Windows.

Does not apply to most other software.

Yes, but I think it works exceptionally for other software, like games!

One example that stands out was the hacking/modding scene of the GTA Vice City with Multi Theft Auto, and even GTA SA, which gained a massive player base that would have never experienced the game and created emotional bonds with it. I can't prove this of course, but I bet a huge portion of the GTA V success was from users who played a moded version of the game in the past "for free".

Another example is the Adobe Suite, like Photoshop, and Illustrator, which allowed many people to become proficient with the Adobe tools and be part of a qualified workforce using that same suite of tools. A lot of these professionals from low-income countries would never had access to these tools otherwise in their formative years.

Price is a barrier to entry for many users who wouldn't have paid for the software.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#94

Post by taormina »

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…

I don’t know, the number of cheaters appears to be non-zero and present enough in my games. Why give any random game studio kernel level access to anything? There are absolutely server-side solutions, likely cheaper solutions because the licensing fees for the anti-cheat software aren’t cheap.

We gave up something real. But it has not been proven whether we got anything. Maybe we got nothing, maybe we stopped a few of the laziest cheaters, but we still see tons of cheaters. The number of possible cheaters is based off the quality of the software. No amount of aftermarket software will magically improve the quality of your game in a way that 100% deters cheaters. I’m positive that their marketing claims they reduce cheaters by an order of magnitude, but I have not observed them successfully catching cheaters with these tools.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#95

Post by doubled112 »

r2_pilot wrote: post #76
EvanAnderson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’d imagine most people would like some insurance in the event of loss or theft, but are not worried about government.

I’m vulnerable to the $8 wrench attack, but enjoy knowing it is only a VISA problem if I leave it a laptop the bus.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#96

Post by jprete »

user_7832 wrote: post #87
brookst wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

To run anti-cheat in that way, you need all game mechanics to be run server-side, and you need to not let the client ever know about something the player should not know - e.g. in a first-person shooter you need to run visibility and occlusion on the server too! Otherwise the cheating will take the form of seeing through walls and the like. This is going to boost the cost of the servers and probably any game subscription, and might lead to bandwidth or latency problems for players - just to avoid running any calculation that is relevant to game balance on player hardware.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#97

Post by simonjgreen »

Tepix wrote: post #56

So, just stating the obvious, you can now (¥) download all xbox games directly from the microsoft store for free? I.e. the xbox is - for now - as completely hacked as the PS Vita? (¥) you might have to figure out some details

Total tangent, but extremely interested in the use of the Yen/Yuan sign as a footnote marker. Is there some history here I’ve overlooked or is this just arbitrary?

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#98

Post by bogwog »

dist-epoch wrote: post #21
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...

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.

Gamers don't want cheaters, but gamers also don't want malware. Some people won't care, others will care. The real problem is that publishers don't give anybody a choice on this. They sneak these invasive anti-piracy measures into their games without asking since they don't want to fragment their player base.

The reasonable, fair, common-sense pro-consumer thing to do is to split the online play in two: a non-anticheat server and an anti-cheat server. Players can opt-in to installing a rootkit/sharing their SSN/whatever if they want to play on the hardened server. This costs nothing, and makes all types of gamers happy.

But doing this has less upside for the publisher than forcing anti-cheat on everyone. The only risk is that they might get dragged through the mud by a handful of influencers peddling impotent rage to viewers who are just looking for background noise while sleepwalking on their Temu dopamine treadmill live service of the month.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#99

Post by beeboobaa3 »

dist-epoch wrote: post #11
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #5

After reading the article, and specially the remarks about this engine being copy-pasted from the Xbox DRM engine , does anyone still believe that Pluton, also copy-pasted from the Xbox, is about end user security? And not totally about MS finally having enforceable DRM on PCs? Oh and by the way Pluton is now on the latest batch of Intel laptop chips. And has been on AMDs for a while. How soon until Windows requires…

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.

For now. It's not ubiquitous enough yet. Games are already starting to require secure boot, the rest will follow in a few years.

Re: Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses

#100

Post by choo-t »

jprete wrote: post #96
user_7832 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

To run anti-cheat in that way, you need all game mechanics to be run server-side, and you need to not let the client ever know about something the player should not know - e.g. in a first-person shooter you need to run visibility and occlusion on the server too! Otherwise the cheating will take the form of seeing through walls and the like. This is going to boost the cost of the servers and probably any game subscrip…

Well yeah, that's the correct way to run a server, don't send information you don't want the user to get.

But as you are pointing out, forcing client-side intrusive anti-cheat is cheaper, thus this as nothing to do about preventing cheating, but about reducing cost.

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