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The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an in
by busterarm 5y ago
The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. They use a separate computer connected taking your HDMI out as an input and then controls your mouse and keyboard inputs. They use ML models and OpenCV. You watch the second computer's monitor and it draws huge boxes around things you shoot and it assists your aim. It doesn't even have to be a PC game, you can do the same with consoles and a computer.
Kernel level anti-cheat is meaningless.
- vasili111 5y agoAny links confirming the existence of such systems?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- oblio 5y agoDo you have some links for this? It sounds super interesting.
- dagw 5y agohttps://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-computer-vision-auto-aim-that-works-on-any-game/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-... There are also videos on Youtube demonstrating it in actions
- WelcomeShorty 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27790723 But there is plenty when you google the key words.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rafale 5y agoThe setup makes it impractical. You would need a very powerful computer to run it in real time. And it won't tell you about what u can't see. You would need to do the same for audio and game mechanics. Check what a top player can do: https://youtu.be/8Qf5Xlty1Cg https://youtu.be/8Qf5Xlty1Cg I doubt an AI will be anywhere close in the next 10 years.
- dagw 5y agoThe AI doesn't have to play the game, just recognise enemy players and calculate how many pixels to move the mouse so that you are aiming at their head. Even the top player you showed could probably have improved his run quite a bit if instead of having to aim he got a guaranteed headshot every time he fired his gun in the vicinity of an enemy.
- busterarm 5y agoCheats like this are actually ruining high risk/reward stake games like Escape From Tarkov & Hunt: Showdown.
- rafale 5y agoYou have to tune cheat tools down or your stats will get you banned. An abnormally high headshot rate is a sure way to get banned. That's where anticheat is going imo: algorithmiclly defining what the fastest more precise human should be capable of. Anything beyond that is "cheating".
- 0xedd 5y agoToo much ego, friend. You should've used the past tense. Skill tunable AI, developed by a private poorly funded group, that plays the game for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=revk5r5vqxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=revk5r5vqxA AlphaStar, developed by a large corp, mopping the floor with Battle.Net's Starcraft 2 players https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1zhmGPmAAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1zhmGPmAAM OpenAI, developed by a large corp, beats top DotA2 team https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfb6aEUMC04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfb6aEUMC04 On one hand, it's exciting tech [old] news. On the other, people who play competitive games must hope for a solution against abuse. The rest of us must hope it isn't an invasive solution such as, what effectively is, kernel malware.
- parkingrift 5y agoThis is why anti-cheat should be performance based. Build a model based on the way that verified elite players play the game, and their performance. Compare “normal” players against the model and look for outliers. Manually review accounts that look suspicious. Cheat behavior is obvious. Ridiculous long distance accuracy. Weird movement. Weird map awareness. Weird awareness of other players. Etc.
- scrollaway 5y agoIncorrect, there’s lots of cheats that are completely seamless and just improve your performance without being a completely binary “perfect headshot” vs “always miss” or something. I guess your last encounter with aimbots was in the early 00s…
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- charcircuit 5y agoIf other players can't tell someone is cheating then it's not actually a problem since everyone will feel the game was fair.
- antoinealb 5y agoIn competitive gaming, having an actually fair game matters more than having a fair feeling game.
- ben-schaaf 5y agoIn proper competitive gaming (ie. with a prize pool) you can apply much more rigorous standards like kyc, a live video feed; even standardized hardware and drug tests.
- antoinealb 5y agoIn magic the gathering, the standards are divided in three: casual (called regular), competitive and professional. Basically the competitive mode is for people who play the game to win, sometimes with small prizes, but still want a very clean playing field. I feel that the standardized hardware and drug tests are feasible at professional, but not competitive, and anti cheat rootkits is interesting in competitive.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoThe average cheater is most certainly not investing in thousands of dollars of hardware to run intense AI models on a second high power machine. These are mostly theoretical hacks. The average cheater is paying $10-50 for cheat software. You may not like the anti-cheat software, but it works against the most common cheats. I think they could have an opt-out league that doesn’t require anti-cheat but remains separate. You might be one of the few non-cheaters in there, but at least it would be an option.
- busterarm 5y agoNo, not even. Your average cheater these days are C and D tier streamers who feel a pressure to perform and have a budget. And it's far easier to do this than you think. They keep getting caught out doing this type of cheat specifically. They're buying trained models from people who have the fancy hardware.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoYou don't need thousands of dollars of hardware. You need one (1) Raspberry Pi 4, plus an HDMI capture card and a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as fake mouse/keyboard. You can totally do that for $50. (Probably less if you use an Arduino clone instead of a Raspberry Pi Zero.) Heuristic software works against the most common cheats. Standard anti-piracy tricks work against the most common cheats. Kernel-level anticheat is only useful against a very specific kind of high-end cheat, and if you're going that far, you might as well use an undefeatable hardware cheat.
- jowsie 5y agoYou're still talking about a bunch of work and effort. The people aimbotting in CSGO aren't doing it because they love hard work and a challenge.
- vintermann 5y agoThe people they do buy cheats from do the work and effort. They don't seem especially bothered by kernel-level anti cheat stuff. It keeps them in business, since they get less quick home-brewed competition.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Drew_ 5y agoWhile there are convincing looking proof of concepts for computer vision based cheats, I haven't seen anything to suggest that this approach is used meaningfully anywhere. And considering the millions of cheat bans that get processed in mainstream games to this day, I think its safe to assume most cheaters aren't using anything sophisticated.
- underdeserver 5y agoCitation needed, seriously. These things need to be crazy fast to process and respond fast enough.
- donkarma 5y agono this is wrong, these cheats are completely unreliable, most people use DMA devices and NeTV2 overlay for league ACs
- longsword 5y ago> Kernel level anti-cheat is meaningless Anti-Cheat on the Account-Level is meaningless. You ban a cheater? Who cares. He will back with a new Account some Minutes later. Hardware Bans are useless aswell, as they can easily be spoofed. The only effective strategy for Anti-Cheat is a Universal Identity Provider, which can proof you are a real Human with no Cheat Record.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoI never got how this worked on Steam. You have a consistent Steam ID, which the game is tied to, and all your achievements/ranks/etc. Isn't that what you are talking about here? You can create a new Steam account, sure, but that would start you again from scratch as a total newbie (and losing access to anything you'd bought)
- vintermann 5y agoI'm amazed at how much money some people have to burn on new accounts. Looking at minecraft servers, there are so ridiculously many people banned. I've wondered if there's some sort of economy here, i.e. someone with a ton of stolen accounts monetizing them by offering to cheat all day on your competitor's server.
- 6yyyyyy 5y agoOh yes, absolutely. There are a number of "alt shops" selling Minecraft accounts accounts for a few cents each. Most of these accounts have security questions set, so you can't change the email and truly "take ownership" of the account, but it's good enough for cheating on servers. Some shops even have an API for generating accounts or tokens, so your hack client can have a feature where you get a new account right from your game. Get banned, reconnect in a few seconds.
- vintermann 5y agoThe last point sounds like a security vulnerability of some sort? It shouldn't be hard for Mojang to issue unforgeable tokens.
- jstummbillig 5y ago> Kernel level anti-cheat is meaningless. If kernel level anti-cheat lead to "serious cheats" having to resort to the above, then kernel level anti-cheat is actually pretty fucking effective.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago> The serious cheats in competitive games these days don't rely on hacking the game anymore. This may be true for a class of cheats, but it isn't broadly true. That means these category of cheats can only enhance what is already visible. In FPS games, being able to see players position through walls is a super valuable cheat _and_ requires access to the underlying game engine (to extract player location).
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoEvery time I hear about the seeing through walls hacks, I wonder why the developer just doesn't send the other users locations unless it should be visible. Maybe because doing the math to figure out if it should be visible is handled completely on the frontend to keep latency low? This is the equivalent of a bank API giving you everyone's information, and the frontend SPA filtering it to only the logged in user.
- jethack 5y agoHere's a write-up about the subject, as implemented in Riot's Valorant, if you're interested: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-...
- ikurei 5y agoAnd aren't the existing anti-cheat technologies the reason that cheats take that form? You see no cheap aimbots and conclude the anti-cheat is not relevant anymore. May be the right conclusion is that they're working. Not saying this justifies the kernel drivers. I don't trust my gaming computer precisely for this reason. I wonder if some form of containerization/virtual machine could make it possible to both allow for this kind of kernel-level anti-cheat without exposing my whole system to untrusted code.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago> I wonder if some form of containerization/virtual machine could make it possible to both allow for this kind of kernel-level anti-cheat without exposing my whole system to untrusted code. No. Because then you could write an aim-bot that runs in the host machine…