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Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

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Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#91

Post by maccard »

mrguyorama wrote: post #81
pyrolistical wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be at least 1 person to figure out why the game isn’t hitting the performance target. That is real engineering

In modern gaming you just make every texture max size even though it only covers a tiny surface and will only fill 6 pixels on a large monitor. Also, half of their shaders are broken on some configurations. Also they used a function call wrong so their game tries to render something a bunch of times instead of once. A huge portion of NVidia and AMD GPU drivers is literally hacks to make games actually run well. Both…

Hi, I’m a game developer.

> in modern gaming you just make every texture max size even though it only covers a tiny surface

This completely false. Not even hyperbole, just plain false. We have budgets, we have tools. You need higher res textures for things that are smaller because you can get close to them. Is there waste? Sure, but no more so than in any other field. My local newspaper takes 15 seconds to load on gigabit WiFi, and hangs on scroll. Reddit can’t handle more than one tab open. Slack uses more ram than the game im developing sometimes. Even HN still falls flat on its face with a “moderately” popular link, and can’t handle it if you perform too many operations.

> A huge portion of NVidia and AMD GPU drivers is literally hacks to make games actually run well.

This is because nvidia and AMD offer this as service but without access to your codebase. The days of them being required to function are long behind us.

> Titanfall 1 shipped with like 30gb of uncompressed audio. They did this to "reduce CPU load". In 2014.

As I’ve said many times, you might disagree but it was intentional. The Xbox one was an 8x1. 75GHz CPU, and some of that was reserved for system use

All software is shit, and held together by duct tape. All industries have products that we can point at and call a disgrace - it’s not games that are the problem.

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#92

Post by sandyarmstrong »

zwily wrote: post #59
lockemx wrote: post #51

Interestingly, the game doesn't run as admin for any good reason. The first thing I did was only let the launcher and game run as the user with RunAsInvoker. The anticheat alone is allowed RunAsAdmin. At the same time, I don't trust any anticheat. It's probably worse than useless, but it is what it is. I thought Microsoft would clean this up after the Crowdstrike incident for all kernel-level code, but I guess there'…

I have a related question for you... my kids like Marvel Rivals, but I also use Microsoft family tools to limit their screen time so they don't have Admin accounts. However, the Marvel Rivals anti-cheat makes me enter my password every time they launch. Is there any way for me to create a shortcut or something so Rivals will launch without my password? I'm not a Windows guy and trying to figure this out has been extr…

I just had to fix this for my kid over the weekend. https://steamcommunity.com/app/2767030/discussions/0/5962604... was very helpful:

You can also skip the UAC prompt without editing the registry, by adding the following to the game's launch options in Steam:

cmd /min /C "set __COMPAT_LAYER=RUNASINVOKER && start "" %command%"

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#93

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80
doctorpangloss wrote: post #7

The engineering culture behind AAA video games is rotten to the core with regards to security. Everyone thinks they're making Doom 3 and they're really making Windows 2000 Service Pack 1.

The problem in big part stems from the business culture upstream. They're trying to produce a game, but what they're really after is e-sports money . They design multiplayer to be about organized pro play, which brings in all the cheating problems of professional sports, so they end up subjecting every player to e-sports-grade security like those anti-cheat systems, despite 99.9% of the player base not caring about p…

Nobody wants to play multiplayer (only) games with cheaters. It is that simple.

Esports money...? Micro transactions is the money. Publisher driven esports is advertising.

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#94

Post by bakugo »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #85

> This also opens the door up to an entrypoint on PS5. Does he mean that this is potentially how one could install custom firmware on their console? Curious because I remember reading somewhat recently that console vendors have locked their consoles down well enough so as to avoid any vulnerabilities which could be exploited to install custom firmware. It would be amusing if that was invalidated by game dev security…

> Does he mean that this is potentially how one could install custom firmware on their console?

Sort of. It's a userland code execution exploit, which is often the first step, but all games run in a locked down VM specifically to protect against things like this, so you still need a kernel/hypervisor exploit to escape the VM and actually mess with the system in any significant way.

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#95

Post by maccard »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #7

The engineering culture behind AAA video games is rotten to the core with regards to security. Everyone thinks they're making Doom 3 and they're really making Windows 2000 Service Pack 1.

It’s definitely games that are the problem. There’s no way that websites are still embedding third party code that is just slopped together shit and wildly vulnerable [0]. Or that domain registrars, one of the core points of trust of the internet would lie about their security practices and be sued by the FTC almost a decade after it[1]. Or that an endpoint management system would take down multiple airports due to basic bounds checks missing [2]. How about a massive software company used by huge enterprises for storing their knowledge bases having an RCE [3]. A global CDN definitely wouldn’t break DNS and take down half the internet [4].

Now you might say, those companies are irresponsible and that well maintained open source software doesn’t have this issue. That would mean no 0 days for linux [5], and that the most battle tested libraries in the world are immune from basic issues [6][7].

Software engineering is broken, it’s not just games. (Although, if you think physical construction is any better I suggest you stick a T square in the corners of your house and figure out how many of your walls aren’t square ). You

[0] https://mrbruh.com/chattr/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42849632

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_CrowdStrike-related_IT_...

[3] https://www.csoonline.com/article/2138177/atlassians-conflue...

[4] https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/22/a-dns-outage-just-took-dow...

[5] https://www.indusface.com/blog/rce-zero-day-vulnerabilities-...

[6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log4Shell

[7] https://heartbleed.com/

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#96

Post by 999900000999 »

daedrdev wrote: post #32
999900000999 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their's a really good argument for having a "gaming" os, Windows, and a serious OS , Linux on the same computer. If League of Legends needs super admin mode, it's no longer my computer. I'm sharing it with Tencent. I can't trust them ( specifically a disgruntled employee) to not install key loggers and other really nasty things.

It's the endgame of cheats. If it's not supreme over all programs, you can cheat by chaining things when it isn't looking or before the anitcheat starts. By running a service from startup with maximal privilege, they can prevent cheats at the expense of running a service from startup as low at maximal privilege. Arguably they could have already gotten all sensitive user data without that privilege if their program wa…

You can already pipe your video output to another box, and add stuff like hitboxes. I think a few monitors are starting to build this in.

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#97

Post by maccard »

bongodongobob wrote: post #76
bilekas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t work in gaming, I know a few people who do, everyone of them does it for the love of the game. Certainly not for the job security or even the money. This idea that they’re also to handle security is too much. It’s not their fault, they’re writing “art” not secure micro services for multi national companies. Publishers will pay to have 0level kernel ring on your system but not for software securing their game.…

I've done IT support for a number of devs across multiple companies and they all expect local admin and admin access to everything. So no, I don't believe they feel it is risky. I believe they don't get it/don't care. It's just not their wheelhouse.

I use a company managed machine. If my machine is compromised even in user space, my AWS credentials (which AWS stores in %UserProfile%/.aws) are hosed. Source code? Gone. Cookies from chrome? Gone. Files on the network share that everyone has mounted? Compromised.

If someone can run a python script on your machine, it’s game over whether it’s running as admin or not.

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#98

Post by maccard »

EA-3167 wrote: post #60
lockemx wrote: post #51

Interestingly, the game doesn't run as admin for any good reason. The first thing I did was only let the launcher and game run as the user with RunAsInvoker. The anticheat alone is allowed RunAsAdmin. At the same time, I don't trust any anticheat. It's probably worse than useless, but it is what it is. I thought Microsoft would clean this up after the Crowdstrike incident for all kernel-level code, but I guess there'…

If anticheat worked then it would be an interesting, perhaps tolerable tradeoff for some. The reality however is that games are absolutely packed with cheaters, there's an international industry in creating cheats for popular games, so what you get is an arms race that as usual only punishes honest users. It's like DRM, pirates don't seem to have much of a problem, but it sure can hurt the rest of us. Unfortunately b…

> Unfortunately both the executives who buy into these things, and the average consumer, are simply too... simple, to understand or appreciate that.

With all due respect, it’s ironic that you’re calling everyone else simple.

Something doesn’t have to be. 100% effective to be a massive deterrent. Cheat prevention is a game of cat and mouse and anti cheat is one of the levers. Here[0] is an example of a popular game with no anti cheat which was completely ruined by cheaters. Did putting EAC into the game stop every single cheater? No. But it did make the experience better for a significant number of players who were having their games destroyed by cheaters.

[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/fall-guys-adding-anti-cheat-in-the-n...

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#99

Post by LordDragonfang »

Etheryte wrote: post #48
kibwen wrote: post #46

I bought a Steam Deck with the sole purpose of having a cheap, airgapped PC to run games on. Game devs just don't have the incentives or discipline to be trusted with security. Reminder that all three Dark Souls games allowed full RCE to any users connected to the internet: https://flashpoint.io/blog/rce-vulnerability-dark-souls/

I wish Steam offered a console format of the deck, essentially the same thing, but with better specs, HDMI out and bluetooth for controllers. Would be a massive hit I wager.

> Would be a massive hit I wager.

I strongly doubt it. Steam already tried releasing a console alternative, Steam boxes, and they massively flopped. By and far the main reason for the Steam deck's success is its portable form factor, not the fact that it's a linux machine that runs games. It succeeded in spite of the software, not because of it.

The overwhelming majority of users are going to want either a "real" (read: Windows) PC, or a "real" (read: the same one their friends have) console.

Re: Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game

#100

Post by EA-3167 »

maccard wrote: post #98
EA-3167 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anticheat worked then it would be an interesting, perhaps tolerable tradeoff for some. The reality however is that games are absolutely packed with cheaters, there's an international industry in creating cheats for popular games, so what you get is an arms race that as usual only punishes honest users. It's like DRM, pirates don't seem to have much of a problem, but it sure can hurt the rest of us. Unfortunately b…

> Unfortunately both the executives who buy into these things, and the average consumer, are simply too... simple, to understand or appreciate that. With all due respect, it’s ironic that you’re calling everyone else simple. Something doesn’t have to be. 100% effective to be a massive deterrent. Cheat prevention is a game of cat and mouse and anti cheat is one of the levers. Here[0] is an example of a popular game wi…

The line that stood out for me in that article was: "There is no in-game reporting system." On a somewhat amusing note, I searched for stories about cheating on Fall Guys these days, and one of the first results was... a vendor for cheats. Literally the third result. Another result was a Reddit article from last February talking about the ubiquity of cheaters. There are similar articles in a similar time frame on Steam and elsewhere. TikTok at that same time has collections of videos of them.

While I'm sure that Easy Anti-Cheat is... easier than a reporting system that would require numerous humans working it, I don't think it's the best solution for the player. It's "just enough" at best, and at worst... well see the article we're all commenting under.

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