5 ms·

If I write a cheat for your game that operates on the kernel level, how would you detect it from the game that runs in user space?

jstanley 5y ago
You wouldn't. But it's my computer and it's supposed to serve me, not you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bombcar 5y ago
Next will be cheats that run in hardware themselves ... I wonder if it's possible to flash a video card to force wire framing ...
- ev1 5y ago
  This is already a thing and somewhat-common, everything from PCIE devices to aimbotters purchasing EV codesigning certs in their own name.
- sprite 5y ago
  From what I understand there are already cheats that work at the hardware level (read video output, modify mouse input) with all software running on another machine.
- DizzyDoo 5y ago
  I mean, this is already happening! Have a Google for "Hardware CS:GO aimbot" and there are some crazy things people are doing to cheat in video games. Stuff that attaches to the CPU, ones that attach to the mouse to fake input that way, it's really quite ingenious. The market for these devices is enormous. I guess radar cheats where the ethernet cable to split to a second computer could also be considered a hardware cheat, since it's running between an airgap.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Definitely already exists. I've seen external aimbots that monitor what's on screen and input specific keyboard/mouse commands. Incredibly difficult to detect, you basically need to model the way users behave differently from bots... but at the high end of competitive play people tend to approach more bot-like behaviors.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I seem to remember some detection algorithms that worked off "reacting faster than humanly possible" - but of course the bot writers tune for that.
- skymt 5y ago
  A writeup from an esports org on hardware cheating: https://blog.esea.net/esea-hardware-cheats/ https://blog.esea.net/esea-hardware-cheats/
- novok 5y ago
  If cheats have to be ML + hardware level and cost a few hundred dollars, that's pretty much mission accomplished for most companies.
  - temporarrry0923 5y ago
    100% this. Coming from someone who made one myself :p if everyone had to do it to cheat, cheating would be OVER at a casual level, and a minor issue at semipros/pros (even irl tourneys can be hacked! see forsaken).
    - int_19h 5y ago
      But why would it cost hundreds or dollars? I can see why a DIY solution might, but if there's demand for it, surely it can be packaged as a plug-and-play device, and manufactured at scale for a lot less?
      - temporarrry0923 5y ago
        I can't see that taking off at scale, but certainly in the semipro level it would be used. Besides, I know like 90% of cheaters are 14 year old kids who used the first google result because it's so easy to. Any resistance and that'll stop a majority
      - novok 5y ago
        Camera + beefy computer + input device, maybe an external motor based thing if controllers are crypto locked by manufacturers in the console case. Even if you made a specialized item it would still cost a lot mostly due to the ML requirements. Maybe smartphone + a specialized input device would reduce the 'cost', but you still need to buy a several hundred dollar cell phone.
stefan_ 5y ago
Yes, it's an impossible fight. Give up early and just detect the supernatural aim server-side or have a working report system.
- Tade0 5y ago
  Or increase the role of aim and reflex when determining rank. Should also reduce smurfing somewhat - you'd only be able to dominate a match once with a given account.
  - bick_nyers 5y ago
    Never thought about that approach before, that is super interesting. Tying it entirely to rank isn't the best, but placing you in lobbies on an axis that is independent (but correlated with) rank would achieve the same effect without clogging high-ranks with cheaters and giving cheaters a reward. Then the cheaters organically get placed in lobbies with other cheaters, ruining the fun for them. If the system doesn't work the best right out of the box, that's fine, because you are still gravitating those cheaters upwards in rank, which will most guarantee that they get reported from other players.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      I've tried to write a bot for a website and it caught naive bots and just put them in the same lobby as other bots. If wasting time of abusers is your goal it's a pretty effective strategy.
      - inetknght 5y ago
        It's very similar to shadow banning
- DizzyDoo 5y ago
  Plenty of games have a server-side checking system that works on reports and statistical checking and it's a bit of a joke, like you say, it's an impossible fight. A pro-player of an FPS game is statistically so far beyond even fairly hardcore players that they trigger that constantly, so quite a lot of the most popular pro-players have their accounts and their alt-accounts whitelisted by the devs or the esports tournaments that host private servers. Which, of course, undermines the system entirely. The problem with "a working report system", by which I take it to mean you have actual humans reviewing reports, does get you somewhere, but it doesn't touch 'humble' cheats, ie: rather than headshotting everyone 100% of the time, a cheat that lowers your recoil 15%. For an already very good player, -15% recoil in CS:GO or PUBG is a crazy, crazy advantage... and yet you couldn't notice it by looking at a video. Even though it's an impossible fight to win completely, I don't think the answer is to "give up early".
TrueDuality 5y ago
By not relying on client side protections to prevent hackers from messing with your game... This is just another flavor of the DRM fight and its not effective.
viccuad 5y ago
Easy: code your game correctly and check for impossibilities server-side. But that costs money in development and infra.
- endtype 5y ago
  It's not the impossibilities I'm worried about. Those are easy to see and report. It's the slight corrections which look "natural" but are actually the work of cheats "assisting" players.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    If the hackers are no longer rampantly ruining the game and rendering it effectively unplayable as someone instantly headshots everyone on sight; if the hackers or botters have become indistinguishable from other competent players, then... Well, excellent! Mission Accomplished. All you have remaining is a matchmaking problem, which they're already, separately trying to solve. (As an aside, we already have games using built in assistance/cheats as an accessibility feature to level the playing field for people using certain hardware or controllers e.g. games with PC and console crossplay, so perhaps there's some approaches and lessons from that which we can apply here as well.) The only thing at stake then is the integrity of leaderboards or tournament brackets, which is a problem that already had some different, separate approaches to solve. But IMO that a problem is absolutely subservient to the integrity and playability of the base game.
    - endtype 5y ago
      "if the hackers or botters have become indistinguishable from other competent players, then... Well, excellent! Mission Accomplished" "... that a problem is absolutely subservient to the integrity and playability of the base game." If you use hacks/cheats to help you play higher than your natural skill/ability, doesn't that ruin the integrity of the game? The mission is not accomplished in this case. Instead it's just tricky to determine who's hacking. Headshotting everyone on-sight also sounds like the old days of hacks in games. In my experience, there is more nuance to the way these cheats are used these days. Most people aren't trying to be obvious about it.
rasz 5y ago
On the server.

jstanley 5y ago

You wouldn't. But it's my computer and it's supposed to serve me, not you.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bombcar 5y ago

Next will be cheats that run in hardware themselves ... I wonder if it's possible to flash a video card to force wire framing ...

ev1 5y ago
This is already a thing and somewhat-common, everything from PCIE devices to aimbotters purchasing EV codesigning certs in their own name.
sprite 5y ago
From what I understand there are already cheats that work at the hardware level (read video output, modify mouse input) with all software running on another machine.
DizzyDoo 5y ago
I mean, this is already happening! Have a Google for "Hardware CS:GO aimbot" and there are some crazy things people are doing to cheat in video games. Stuff that attaches to the CPU, ones that attach to the mouse to fake input that way, it's really quite ingenious. The market for these devices is enormous. I guess radar cheats where the ethernet cable to split to a second computer could also be considered a hardware cheat, since it's running between an airgap.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Definitely already exists. I've seen external aimbots that monitor what's on screen and input specific keyboard/mouse commands. Incredibly difficult to detect, you basically need to model the way users behave differently from bots... but at the high end of competitive play people tend to approach more bot-like behaviors.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I seem to remember some detection algorithms that worked off "reacting faster than humanly possible" - but of course the bot writers tune for that.
skymt 5y ago
A writeup from an esports org on hardware cheating: https://blog.esea.net/esea-hardware-cheats/ https://blog.esea.net/esea-hardware-cheats/
novok 5y ago
If cheats have to be ML + hardware level and cost a few hundred dollars, that's pretty much mission accomplished for most companies.
- temporarrry0923 5y ago
  100% this. Coming from someone who made one myself :p if everyone had to do it to cheat, cheating would be OVER at a casual level, and a minor issue at semipros/pros (even irl tourneys can be hacked! see forsaken).
  - int_19h 5y ago
    But why would it cost hundreds or dollars? I can see why a DIY solution might, but if there's demand for it, surely it can be packaged as a plug-and-play device, and manufactured at scale for a lot less?
    - temporarrry0923 5y ago
      I can't see that taking off at scale, but certainly in the semipro level it would be used. Besides, I know like 90% of cheaters are 14 year old kids who used the first google result because it's so easy to. Any resistance and that'll stop a majority
    - novok 5y ago
      Camera + beefy computer + input device, maybe an external motor based thing if controllers are crypto locked by manufacturers in the console case. Even if you made a specialized item it would still cost a lot mostly due to the ML requirements. Maybe smartphone + a specialized input device would reduce the 'cost', but you still need to buy a several hundred dollar cell phone.

stefan_ 5y ago

Yes, it's an impossible fight. Give up early and just detect the supernatural aim server-side or have a working report system.

Tade0 5y ago
Or increase the role of aim and reflex when determining rank. Should also reduce smurfing somewhat - you'd only be able to dominate a match once with a given account.
- bick_nyers 5y ago
  Never thought about that approach before, that is super interesting. Tying it entirely to rank isn't the best, but placing you in lobbies on an axis that is independent (but correlated with) rank would achieve the same effect without clogging high-ranks with cheaters and giving cheaters a reward. Then the cheaters organically get placed in lobbies with other cheaters, ruining the fun for them. If the system doesn't work the best right out of the box, that's fine, because you are still gravitating those cheaters upwards in rank, which will most guarantee that they get reported from other players.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    I've tried to write a bot for a website and it caught naive bots and just put them in the same lobby as other bots. If wasting time of abusers is your goal it's a pretty effective strategy.
    - inetknght 5y ago
      It's very similar to shadow banning
DizzyDoo 5y ago
Plenty of games have a server-side checking system that works on reports and statistical checking and it's a bit of a joke, like you say, it's an impossible fight. A pro-player of an FPS game is statistically so far beyond even fairly hardcore players that they trigger that constantly, so quite a lot of the most popular pro-players have their accounts and their alt-accounts whitelisted by the devs or the esports tournaments that host private servers. Which, of course, undermines the system entirely. The problem with "a working report system", by which I take it to mean you have actual humans reviewing reports, does get you somewhere, but it doesn't touch 'humble' cheats, ie: rather than headshotting everyone 100% of the time, a cheat that lowers your recoil 15%. For an already very good player, -15% recoil in CS:GO or PUBG is a crazy, crazy advantage... and yet you couldn't notice it by looking at a video. Even though it's an impossible fight to win completely, I don't think the answer is to "give up early".

TrueDuality 5y ago

By not relying on client side protections to prevent hackers from messing with your game... This is just another flavor of the DRM fight and its not effective.

viccuad 5y ago

Easy: code your game correctly and check for impossibilities server-side. But that costs money in development and infra.

endtype 5y ago
It's not the impossibilities I'm worried about. Those are easy to see and report. It's the slight corrections which look "natural" but are actually the work of cheats "assisting" players.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  If the hackers are no longer rampantly ruining the game and rendering it effectively unplayable as someone instantly headshots everyone on sight; if the hackers or botters have become indistinguishable from other competent players, then... Well, excellent! Mission Accomplished. All you have remaining is a matchmaking problem, which they're already, separately trying to solve. (As an aside, we already have games using built in assistance/cheats as an accessibility feature to level the playing field for people using certain hardware or controllers e.g. games with PC and console crossplay, so perhaps there's some approaches and lessons from that which we can apply here as well.) The only thing at stake then is the integrity of leaderboards or tournament brackets, which is a problem that already had some different, separate approaches to solve. But IMO that a problem is absolutely subservient to the integrity and playability of the base game.
  - endtype 5y ago
    "if the hackers or botters have become indistinguishable from other competent players, then... Well, excellent! Mission Accomplished" "... that a problem is absolutely subservient to the integrity and playability of the base game." If you use hacks/cheats to help you play higher than your natural skill/ability, doesn't that ruin the integrity of the game? The mission is not accomplished in this case. Instead it's just tricky to determine who's hacking. Headshotting everyone on-sight also sounds like the old days of hacks in games. In my experience, there is more nuance to the way these cheats are used these days. Most people aren't trying to be obvious about it.

rasz 5y ago

On the server.