3 ms·

Game devs don't optimize for security, because they're not incentivised to.

pjmlp 6y ago
And then their MMO/MMORPG server gets p0wned, with everyone taking advantage of extra virtual money, adding assets to their characters for free and auto aiming packet correction.
- serf 6y ago
  and, as evidenced by Grand Theft Auto and Counter-Strike, players continue playing with hackers. There is even reason for (say, for example) Rockstar to leave hackers alone in GTA : they act as artificial whales to lure real players into buying in-game currency in order to keep up/seek revenge. There are a few games I can think of off the top of my head that have a symbiotic relationship with hackers.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    The kind of hacking that happens in first person shooters has nothing to do with security failures. It is fundamentally impossible to stop aim bots. All you can do is continually play cat and mouse games to make it harder.
    - happyconcepts 6y ago
      Why is it fundamentally impossible to stop aimbots?
      - chayleaf 6y ago
        because it requires you to distinguish between a human's aim and a bot's aim, which is pretty much impossible with a good enough bot
        esrauch 6y ago
        I think Steam actually primarily catches cheaters by it seeing the other running software rather than looking at the input patterns. I'm not sure whether it would detect a cheat implemented via a camera and custom mouse hardware that sends usb events you didn't do. But I also think a lot of the hackers in both GTA and CS are cheating in ways that no regular user input could trigger, they're compromising the software at a lower level than that.
        schmorptron 6y ago
        From what I know, VAC (Valve Anti Cheat) just looks for processes running on the system and detects injections into CSs memory. Then, for CS:GO specifically there's Overwatch, in which players look at other reported players' gameplay to determine whether they were cheating, and VacNET which is a machine learning system trained on the data from Overwatch to detect aimbots that way. There's a really good talk that someone from valve gave about 3 years ago[0]. The bigger problem is that even with input recognition, one of the biggest problems are wallhacks, meaning you can see other players through walls which is an advantage that's almost as large as aimbotting in tactical shooters like CS. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiP0zKF9bc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiP0zKF9bc
        chayleaf 6y ago
        The comment above was specifically about aimbots, i.e. cheats that mimic a person. Such cheats can be hidden from the system well enough for it to not know there is a program controlling the input. I'm not saying all kinds of cheats can stay 100% undetected and functional with enough effort on the hackers' side, that's obviously false.
      - PowerBar 6y ago
        Because the player's computer needs to know where the enemy is in order to render them on the screen, create footstep sounds, calculate shadows, etc. As long as the player has ultimate (root, admin, etc) access on that computer, it will always be possible for a program running with elevated privileges to read that enemy position data from the game's memory and make the required mouse movements to point at it and left-click. The only way to prevent this is to remove elevated access from the player's computer. This has been done with varying levels of success on consoles, but even then it's only a matter of time.
klodolph 6y ago
This is a common problem in other parts of the software industry, but Valve is missing a piece of the solution. The typical problem at software companies is that developers are incentivized only to write code for new features that will land them promotions and look good on their resume--but bugfixes and security work is not part of that. Management can counteract this with top-down initiatives. Programs like "fix-it week" or teams dedicated to security with different incentives in place. For example, Google suffers from the "promotion-oriented programming" about as badly as any other company, but they manage to take security seriously. Valve has "flat hierarchy", which goes in quotes because the hierarchy isn't really flat, it's just hidden. Because the hierarchy is hidden, it's harder to address large-scale problems like institutional priorities... because there are fewer people to delegate large-scale problems to.

And then their MMO/MMORPG server gets p0wned, with everyone taking advantage of extra virtual money, adding assets to their characters for free and auto aiming packet correction.

serf 6y ago
and, as evidenced by Grand Theft Auto and Counter-Strike, players continue playing with hackers. There is even reason for (say, for example) Rockstar to leave hackers alone in GTA : they act as artificial whales to lure real players into buying in-game currency in order to keep up/seek revenge. There are a few games I can think of off the top of my head that have a symbiotic relationship with hackers.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  The kind of hacking that happens in first person shooters has nothing to do with security failures. It is fundamentally impossible to stop aim bots. All you can do is continually play cat and mouse games to make it harder.
  - happyconcepts 6y ago
    Why is it fundamentally impossible to stop aimbots?
    - chayleaf 6y ago
      because it requires you to distinguish between a human's aim and a bot's aim, which is pretty much impossible with a good enough bot
      - esrauch 6y ago
        I think Steam actually primarily catches cheaters by it seeing the other running software rather than looking at the input patterns. I'm not sure whether it would detect a cheat implemented via a camera and custom mouse hardware that sends usb events you didn't do. But I also think a lot of the hackers in both GTA and CS are cheating in ways that no regular user input could trigger, they're compromising the software at a lower level than that.
        schmorptron 6y ago
        From what I know, VAC (Valve Anti Cheat) just looks for processes running on the system and detects injections into CSs memory. Then, for CS:GO specifically there's Overwatch, in which players look at other reported players' gameplay to determine whether they were cheating, and VacNET which is a machine learning system trained on the data from Overwatch to detect aimbots that way. There's a really good talk that someone from valve gave about 3 years ago[0]. The bigger problem is that even with input recognition, one of the biggest problems are wallhacks, meaning you can see other players through walls which is an advantage that's almost as large as aimbotting in tactical shooters like CS. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiP0zKF9bc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiP0zKF9bc
        chayleaf 6y ago
        The comment above was specifically about aimbots, i.e. cheats that mimic a person. Such cheats can be hidden from the system well enough for it to not know there is a program controlling the input. I'm not saying all kinds of cheats can stay 100% undetected and functional with enough effort on the hackers' side, that's obviously false.
    - PowerBar 6y ago
      Because the player's computer needs to know where the enemy is in order to render them on the screen, create footstep sounds, calculate shadows, etc. As long as the player has ultimate (root, admin, etc) access on that computer, it will always be possible for a program running with elevated privileges to read that enemy position data from the game's memory and make the required mouse movements to point at it and left-click. The only way to prevent this is to remove elevated access from the player's computer. This has been done with varying levels of success on consoles, but even then it's only a matter of time.

klodolph 6y ago

This is a common problem in other parts of the software industry, but Valve is missing a piece of the solution. The typical problem at software companies is that developers are incentivized only to write code for new features that will land them promotions and look good on their resume--but bugfixes and security work is not part of that. Management can counteract this with top-down initiatives. Programs like "fix-it week" or teams dedicated to security with different incentives in place. For example, Google suffers from the "promotion-oriented programming" about as badly as any other company, but they manage to take security seriously. Valve has "flat hierarchy", which goes in quotes because the hierarchy isn't really flat, it's just hidden. Because the hierarchy is hidden, it's harder to address large-scale problems like institutional priorities... because there are fewer people to delegate large-scale problems to.