4 ms·

Love this topic. I remember Everquest used to checksum areas of memory that were commonly modified from cheats. World of Warcraft used to (possibly still does,

by sprite 4y ago

Love this topic. I remember Everquest used to checksum areas of memory that were commonly modified from cheats. World of Warcraft used to (possibly still does, it has been forever since I looked at this) inject anti cheat code at runtime. Obfuscation and deobfuscation is also super interesting. I think overall reverse engineering and figuring out how things work is one of the most interesting things in computer science. https://github.com/obfuscator-llvm/obfuscator/tree/llvm-4.0/lib/Transforms/Obfuscation https://github.com/obfuscator-llvm/obfuscator/tree/llvm-4.0/... https://blog.quarkslab.com/deobfuscation-recovering-an-ollvm-protected-program.html https://blog.quarkslab.com/deobfuscation-recovering-an-ollvm...

mabbo 4y ago
World of Warcraft did something that I've always found delightful: hidden stenographic watermarking on all screenshots. It took like a decade before anyone noticed, but all screenshots were very very very slightly modified to hide (in plain sight) a blob of data that gave the account name, date, time, server, etc. Just in case a screenshot ever got posted and they really needed to know who took it and when.
- d110af5ccf 4y ago
  > that I've always found delightful Leaking user data to me is a betrayal of trust, incredibly distasteful, and probably borders on illegal (it ought to be imo). Note that this is fundamentally different than watermarking streaming content or other material that the user is not legally permitted to copy. Watermarking the game binaries themselves, for example, would be entirely different and perfectly acceptable from my perspective.
  - FateOfNations 4y ago
    While WoW didn't do this, one could avoid disclosing user data to third parties by encrypting the watermark payload.
    - rany_ 4y ago
      This works until the encryption key is leaked.
- ironick09 4y ago
  Do you have any resources/information you can share on this? I’d be curious to read more.
  - lights0123 4y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/zp8sg/tracking_personal_information_through_wow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/zp8sg/tracking_persona...

by sprite 4y ago

mabbo 4y ago

World of Warcraft did something that I've always found delightful: hidden stenographic watermarking on all screenshots. It took like a decade before anyone noticed, but all screenshots were very very very slightly modified to hide (in plain sight) a blob of data that gave the account name, date, time, server, etc. Just in case a screenshot ever got posted and they really needed to know who took it and when.

d110af5ccf 4y ago
> that I've always found delightful Leaking user data to me is a betrayal of trust, incredibly distasteful, and probably borders on illegal (it ought to be imo). Note that this is fundamentally different than watermarking streaming content or other material that the user is not legally permitted to copy. Watermarking the game binaries themselves, for example, would be entirely different and perfectly acceptable from my perspective.
- FateOfNations 4y ago
  While WoW didn't do this, one could avoid disclosing user data to third parties by encrypting the watermark payload.
  - rany_ 4y ago
    This works until the encryption key is leaked.
ironick09 4y ago
Do you have any resources/information you can share on this? I’d be curious to read more.
- lights0123 4y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/zp8sg/tracking_personal_information_through_wow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/zp8sg/tracking_persona...