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I can't believe people are willingly installing rootkits of dubious origin on their computers to play games (and paying for the privilege). I know cheating is a

I can't believe people are willingly installing rootkits of dubious origin on their computers to play games (and paying for the privilege). I know cheating is an issue, but still.

NoPicklez 2y ago
I wouldn't say these anti-cheat tools that come with Valorant or LoL are from dubious origins. eSports has grown, real money is on the table and cheating is rampant in many games and it's not always obvious cheating, it's often slight improvements. People complain, but there are a ton of games that use a kernel based anti cheat system that people haven't been flapping their arms around. Valve anti-cheat, EasyCheat etc. Edit: Valve isn't kernel based, my mistake
- esdf 2y ago
  I've never heard of a kernel-based anti-cheat from Valve. Can you provide a source for that
- devrand 2y ago
  This is get first that I’m hearing that VAC is kernel level. Do you have a source for that?
- dkarras 2y ago
  >I wouldn't say these anti-cheat tools that come with Valorant or LoL are from dubious origins. You are talking about Vanguard, developed by Riot which is owned by Tencent which is a Chinese company? China has demonstrated enough grip on companies over the years that anything China can directly influence is dubious. China can decide to do something with the installations and has the power to do it in secret. It is significantly harder in western democracies. The relationship between the state and the private enterprises is entirely different. Valve's VAC is not in the same league with Vanguard from a technical point of view (it is not even kernel based if I'm not mistaken). I would not let that slide either if it was though.
  - Hawxy 2y ago
    At least in terms of video games investment, Tencent is known to be very hands-off of the western companies it owns and is often seen to be a better option vs some western conglomerates. Ubisoft turning to Tencent to help it fight off a takeover attempt from Vivendi is a pretty good example. Vanguard itself is developed by a US-based team and they've stated that they have very little to do with Tencent's anti-cheat team (Tencent uses its own solution for the CN region, including for Riots game) beyond sharing cheat samples.
- troad 2y ago
  > eSports has grown It's not really clear it has, or is. [0] People, at least in the West, don't seem to think watching video games be played is equivalent to watching sport, which is honestly the least surprising thing ever to me, but I guess I'm not a bombastic YouTube 'content creator'. I think the main problem has nothing to do with eSports, it's simply that average people don't enjoy games that are rigged against them. Ergo, a profit incentive arises to prevent cheating in multiplayer games. And since a separate profit incentive dictates that all games must be online these days, we end up in a situation where I can't play a single-player game of Madden on Linux because it explicitly blocks Wine, [1] presumably to protect the fairness of multiplayer. (Or more cynically, the integrity of the Madden MUT loot pack casino. Profit motives everywhere!) [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/the-streamer-who-spent-dollar1m-on-an-esports-team-says-esports-is-a-terrible-business-everyone-is-losing-a-lot-of-money/ https://www.pcgamer.com/the-streamer-who-spent-dollar1m-on-a... [1] https://www.protondb.com/app/2140330 https://www.protondb.com/app/2140330
justin66 2y ago
Would you believe that until around the year 2000, people would run games on their computers that had control over the entire machine? The idiots.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  The value of control over a non networked computer is pretty low. This was the days of dialup and internet access was pretty spotty.
  - metadat 2y ago
    How often have games coopted end-user computers for nefarious purposes? Yes, the anti-cheat software may often be crap, yet this next step is not a common phenomenon. Except for Sony, lol.
  - justin66 2y ago
    I want to make a joke but... the kids might actually believe the world didn't have to worry about malware until their computers were networked. Holy moly. I can't attack this without visual aids of some kind.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Yeah malware was pretty different back then.
lispisok 2y ago
That's what the cheaters are doing. It's a cat and mouse game and it's hard to detect cheats that are running in kernel space when your anti-cheat is running in user space.
Cloudef 2y ago
It's getting more and more ridiculous like controlling what software your computer can have installed. Pretty sure some even require TPM and that you are booting into a "trusted environment". The only one who suffers is the genuine gamer as cheaters find their way around, either by directly reading and writing from/to the RAM chip directly or using another PC running machine vision and feeding inputs as a emulated USB hid devices. I don't think cheating is something that can be solved by a technology in FPS games, you can do some server side checks but it gets really difficult unless you stream the whole game as a video feed from a remote server. Cheating is a social issue, and we had working solution for it.. dedicated community servers which were community moderated.
- booi 2y ago
  Hold up, there is cheating tech that uses machine vision and hid inputs?! That’s hardcore. Sad they couldn’t put that talent to something like self driving…
  - wlesieutre 2y ago
    https://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-...
  - pushedx 2y ago
    This is an excellent mini documentary explaining the various techniques to avoid kernel level anti-cheat, including pre-boot EFI-based cheats, PCIe DMA sniffing, video over serial auto clickers, and the state of the art motion detection over streaming video with MITM USB host controller. https://youtu.be/RwzIq04vd0M https://youtu.be/RwzIq04vd0M
    - newzisforsukas 2y ago
      I wonder how useful injecting subperceptual noise is in combating the CV approach
somehnguy 2y ago
As someone who plays a competitive FPS game 5-6 nights - I’m all for anti-cheat that actually works. Online games are plagued with cheaters and it really ruins the experience. If rootkit-style anticheat helps the situation at all I’m personally willing to make that trade off.
vkou 2y ago
Given that the average computer has hundreds of pieces of software of 'dubious origin' installed on it, in everywhere from the OS to the driver to the application layer, I can't believe you are seriously baffled that most people don't think twice about adding another one... That's sourced from a reputable vendor. Reputable, in the sense that you're already willing to install and execute a closed-source binary blob (the game itself) on your PC.

I can't believe people are willingly installing rootkits of dubious origin on their computers to play games (and paying for the privilege). I know cheating is an issue, but still.

NoPicklez 2y ago

I wouldn't say these anti-cheat tools that come with Valorant or LoL are from dubious origins. eSports has grown, real money is on the table and cheating is rampant in many games and it's not always obvious cheating, it's often slight improvements. People complain, but there are a ton of games that use a kernel based anti cheat system that people haven't been flapping their arms around. Valve anti-cheat, EasyCheat etc. Edit: Valve isn't kernel based, my mistake

esdf 2y ago
I've never heard of a kernel-based anti-cheat from Valve. Can you provide a source for that
devrand 2y ago
This is get first that I’m hearing that VAC is kernel level. Do you have a source for that?
dkarras 2y ago
>I wouldn't say these anti-cheat tools that come with Valorant or LoL are from dubious origins. You are talking about Vanguard, developed by Riot which is owned by Tencent which is a Chinese company? China has demonstrated enough grip on companies over the years that anything China can directly influence is dubious. China can decide to do something with the installations and has the power to do it in secret. It is significantly harder in western democracies. The relationship between the state and the private enterprises is entirely different. Valve's VAC is not in the same league with Vanguard from a technical point of view (it is not even kernel based if I'm not mistaken). I would not let that slide either if it was though.
- Hawxy 2y ago
  At least in terms of video games investment, Tencent is known to be very hands-off of the western companies it owns and is often seen to be a better option vs some western conglomerates. Ubisoft turning to Tencent to help it fight off a takeover attempt from Vivendi is a pretty good example. Vanguard itself is developed by a US-based team and they've stated that they have very little to do with Tencent's anti-cheat team (Tencent uses its own solution for the CN region, including for Riots game) beyond sharing cheat samples.
troad 2y ago
> eSports has grown It's not really clear it has, or is. [0] People, at least in the West, don't seem to think watching video games be played is equivalent to watching sport, which is honestly the least surprising thing ever to me, but I guess I'm not a bombastic YouTube 'content creator'. I think the main problem has nothing to do with eSports, it's simply that average people don't enjoy games that are rigged against them. Ergo, a profit incentive arises to prevent cheating in multiplayer games. And since a separate profit incentive dictates that all games must be online these days, we end up in a situation where I can't play a single-player game of Madden on Linux because it explicitly blocks Wine, [1] presumably to protect the fairness of multiplayer. (Or more cynically, the integrity of the Madden MUT loot pack casino. Profit motives everywhere!) [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/the-streamer-who-spent-dollar1m-on-an-esports-team-says-esports-is-a-terrible-business-everyone-is-losing-a-lot-of-money/ https://www.pcgamer.com/the-streamer-who-spent-dollar1m-on-a... [1] https://www.protondb.com/app/2140330 https://www.protondb.com/app/2140330

justin66 2y ago

Would you believe that until around the year 2000, people would run games on their computers that had control over the entire machine? The idiots.

throwaway48476 2y ago
The value of control over a non networked computer is pretty low. This was the days of dialup and internet access was pretty spotty.
- metadat 2y ago
  How often have games coopted end-user computers for nefarious purposes? Yes, the anti-cheat software may often be crap, yet this next step is not a common phenomenon. Except for Sony, lol.
- justin66 2y ago
  I want to make a joke but... the kids might actually believe the world didn't have to worry about malware until their computers were networked. Holy moly. I can't attack this without visual aids of some kind.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Yeah malware was pretty different back then.

lispisok 2y ago

That's what the cheaters are doing. It's a cat and mouse game and it's hard to detect cheats that are running in kernel space when your anti-cheat is running in user space.

Cloudef 2y ago

It's getting more and more ridiculous like controlling what software your computer can have installed. Pretty sure some even require TPM and that you are booting into a "trusted environment". The only one who suffers is the genuine gamer as cheaters find their way around, either by directly reading and writing from/to the RAM chip directly or using another PC running machine vision and feeding inputs as a emulated USB hid devices. I don't think cheating is something that can be solved by a technology in FPS games, you can do some server side checks but it gets really difficult unless you stream the whole game as a video feed from a remote server. Cheating is a social issue, and we had working solution for it.. dedicated community servers which were community moderated.

booi 2y ago
Hold up, there is cheating tech that uses machine vision and hid inputs?! That’s hardcore. Sad they couldn’t put that talent to something like self driving…
- wlesieutre 2y ago
  https://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-...
- pushedx 2y ago
  This is an excellent mini documentary explaining the various techniques to avoid kernel level anti-cheat, including pre-boot EFI-based cheats, PCIe DMA sniffing, video over serial auto clickers, and the state of the art motion detection over streaming video with MITM USB host controller. https://youtu.be/RwzIq04vd0M https://youtu.be/RwzIq04vd0M
  - newzisforsukas 2y ago
    I wonder how useful injecting subperceptual noise is in combating the CV approach

somehnguy 2y ago

As someone who plays a competitive FPS game 5-6 nights - I’m all for anti-cheat that actually works. Online games are plagued with cheaters and it really ruins the experience. If rootkit-style anticheat helps the situation at all I’m personally willing to make that trade off.

vkou 2y ago

Given that the average computer has hundreds of pieces of software of 'dubious origin' installed on it, in everywhere from the OS to the driver to the application layer, I can't believe you are seriously baffled that most people don't think twice about adding another one... That's sourced from a reputable vendor. Reputable, in the sense that you're already willing to install and execute a closed-source binary blob (the game itself) on your PC.