7 ms·

> In its initial rollout on Call of Duty: Warzone, the kernel-level driver will only operate when you play on PC. The driver is not always-on. The software turn

> In its initial rollout on Call of Duty: Warzone, the kernel-level driver will only operate when you play on PC. The driver is not always-on. The software turns on when you start Call of Duty: Warzone and shuts down when you close the game. Oh that's good. > Plus, the kernel-level driver only monitors and reports activity related to Call of Duty. Oh, so in other words it reports everything since any software that might be used to cheat at call of duty is technically related to call of duty... Whenever I see this kind of vague verbiage it's never a surprise when it turns out the people who wrote it chose their words very carefully, to purposefully mislead people. Edit: Oh, and they definitely say they monitor other software "that interacts with call of duty" later in the article.

Arnavion 5y ago
You don't really have to put so much effort into dissecting their verbiage. It's guaranteed that any kernel anti-cheat is going to be invasive and inspect everything on the system while looking for cheats.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  No, it's absolutely not guaranteed. Especially in competitive shooters, performance is paramount. They have a strong motivation to only look where they need to. And anti-cheat isn't a money-maker, so they're not going to be spending lots of money storing user data they don't have to. Cheat software has to do things like nose around in the game's memory space that no legitimate program is going to do. It also contains in its memory space keywords common to cheat programs. That sort of search isn't really invasive because generally anti-cheat software when it triggers takes an screenshot, and if you're playing the game, there's nothing personal on the screen. Maybe a process is fingerprinted as a known cheat package. Say your kill to death ratio or hit/miss is unusually good. Or you get reported by a higher than normal number of people. Or a human moderator pushes a request, for whatever reason. Or they get a hit on the 'greps' I mentioned, etc. The goal is to see if you've got a screen overlay that betrays wallhacking (ie "glasswalling") or a cheat system's UI. That's all they care about.
  - IanSanders 5y ago
    > And anti-cheat isn't a money-maker, so they're not going to be spending lots of money storing user data they don't have to. user data can absolutely be a money-maker
    - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
      I don't think anyone is going to pay for K/D data from CoD. Data can be if it's useful, this isn't useful to anyone outside the people playing the game.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    I’ve heard of people being flagged for having things like a debugger open, or files with names that happen to match cheating tools. I don’t think it’s correct to present anticheat as just sitting around screenshotting the computer to find cheat UI.
  - RattleyCooper 5y ago
    I've actually had anti-cheat software flag programs as possible cheating tools and refused to run a game until I literally remove the suspected software from my computer (when it wasn't even running). So while what you say certainly makes sense, I don't think that it's accurate.
floatingatoll 5y ago
If you suspect a conspiracy or that you're being lied to, prove otherwise! You'll earn worldwide fame and press if you prove they're lying. Yeah, it's hard work, but it's not impossible, it's just difficult. You can disassemble the kernel driver with a variety of open source tools, inspect exactly what it's looking for, and publish that. It's what the cheat authors are going to do anyways, but they won't publish what they find, because they want to profit from the knowledge.
jacquesm 5y ago
This is just an accident waiting to happen. If they can't identify cheats on the server side then I highly doubt that they are able to engineer this in such a way that it does not have negative security implications.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Historically anti-cheats are about as big a mess as AV engines in the kernel.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Arnavion 5y ago

You don't really have to put so much effort into dissecting their verbiage. It's guaranteed that any kernel anti-cheat is going to be invasive and inspect everything on the system while looking for cheats.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
No, it's absolutely not guaranteed. Especially in competitive shooters, performance is paramount. They have a strong motivation to only look where they need to. And anti-cheat isn't a money-maker, so they're not going to be spending lots of money storing user data they don't have to. Cheat software has to do things like nose around in the game's memory space that no legitimate program is going to do. It also contains in its memory space keywords common to cheat programs. That sort of search isn't really invasive because generally anti-cheat software when it triggers takes an screenshot, and if you're playing the game, there's nothing personal on the screen. Maybe a process is fingerprinted as a known cheat package. Say your kill to death ratio or hit/miss is unusually good. Or you get reported by a higher than normal number of people. Or a human moderator pushes a request, for whatever reason. Or they get a hit on the 'greps' I mentioned, etc. The goal is to see if you've got a screen overlay that betrays wallhacking (ie "glasswalling") or a cheat system's UI. That's all they care about.
- IanSanders 5y ago
  > And anti-cheat isn't a money-maker, so they're not going to be spending lots of money storing user data they don't have to. user data can absolutely be a money-maker
  - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is going to pay for K/D data from CoD. Data can be if it's useful, this isn't useful to anyone outside the people playing the game.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  I’ve heard of people being flagged for having things like a debugger open, or files with names that happen to match cheating tools. I don’t think it’s correct to present anticheat as just sitting around screenshotting the computer to find cheat UI.
- RattleyCooper 5y ago
  I've actually had anti-cheat software flag programs as possible cheating tools and refused to run a game until I literally remove the suspected software from my computer (when it wasn't even running). So while what you say certainly makes sense, I don't think that it's accurate.

floatingatoll 5y ago

If you suspect a conspiracy or that you're being lied to, prove otherwise! You'll earn worldwide fame and press if you prove they're lying. Yeah, it's hard work, but it's not impossible, it's just difficult. You can disassemble the kernel driver with a variety of open source tools, inspect exactly what it's looking for, and publish that. It's what the cheat authors are going to do anyways, but they won't publish what they find, because they want to profit from the knowledge.

jacquesm 5y ago

This is just an accident waiting to happen. If they can't identify cheats on the server side then I highly doubt that they are able to engineer this in such a way that it does not have negative security implications.

formerly_proven 5y ago
Historically anti-cheats are about as big a mess as AV engines in the kernel.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]