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> Trying to force ever more restrictive and intrusive controls upon players won't solve cheating. I think it's not about "solving" cheating, so much as making

> Trying to force ever more restrictive and intrusive controls upon players won't solve cheating. I think it's not about "solving" cheating, so much as making it sufficiently annoying to maintain working cheats that fewer people try. Just as in cybersecurity, no individual security measure will "solve" hacking, but in concert they reduce the impact by making it more difficult: the "Swiss Cheese Method" / defense-in-depth. Reading through game cheating boards, it seems many hardware devices have been detected over time. It's an arms race. Here's a discussion of how anticheat started to detect people using HID-emulating devices by forcing a disconnection event: https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/valorant/615373-vanguard-bans-kmbox-arduino.html https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/valorant/615373-vanguard-...

kuschku 2y ago
> Reading through game cheating boards, it seems many hardware devices have been detected over time. It's an arms race. Here's a discussion of how anticheat started to detect people using HID-emulating devices by forcing a disconnection event That's a hack which only works for some devices in some specific state. At that point you're playing whack-a-mole, and you'll always lose. > I think it's not about "solving" cheating, so much as making it sufficiently annoying to maintain working cheats that fewer people try Annoying? I don't think you understand the hacker mentality. Breaking anticheat or DRM tickles the same nerv as CTFs or puzzle games. What you consider "annoying" is an activity others do for fun. It's fun to break a system that's intentionally trying to keep you out. That's why I reverse engineer proprietary, obfuscated file formats and protocols. Whether that's brother plotters, blackmagic's input devices (which also function as license dongles), apple video codecs (actually still WIP) or my landlord's wireless water meter so I can add homeassistant support for it. When kernel-level anticheat became a thing, I actually built a custom hardware aimbot out of an HDMI capture card and a custom Sandisk wireless clone that I was working on at the time. I've only used it once or twice, as I'm not a competitive gamer and don't actually have any use for it. The entire fun was in breaking the system.
- macNchz 2y ago
  > At that point you're playing whack-a-mole, and you'll always lose. That's just sort of fundamental to society at some level though, we play whack a mole with all sorts of misbehavior until we reach some sort of acceptable equilibrium. I totally get the hacker mentality, I have a fully disassembled HP printer under my desk with some bullshit DRM that I've been desperate to break for some time, but I think your last line is really the key: breaking the system is fun for a small portion of people who are able to do it, but it's their users/customers who will be annoyed when their accounts keep getting banned and they need to buy new hardware.
  - kuschku 2y ago
    > fully disassembled HP printer under my desk with some bullshit DRM that I've been desperate to break for some time With my brother printers it turned out I could just remove the chips from the genuine toner cartridges, reset the counters, and hot glue them to the refurbished toner. Maybe that works for HP ink as well?
    - macNchz 2y ago
      This printer will simply refuse to print without an always-on connection to their cloud, it's diabolical. Thought I might be able to get root via its crappy web interface but no luck, and it seems to use properly implemented TLS when talking with the verification server, so I've taken it apart to poke at some interesting looking points on the PCB.

kuschku 2y ago

> Reading through game cheating boards, it seems many hardware devices have been detected over time. It's an arms race. Here's a discussion of how anticheat started to detect people using HID-emulating devices by forcing a disconnection event That's a hack which only works for some devices in some specific state. At that point you're playing whack-a-mole, and you'll always lose. > I think it's not about "solving" cheating, so much as making it sufficiently annoying to maintain working cheats that fewer people try Annoying? I don't think you understand the hacker mentality. Breaking anticheat or DRM tickles the same nerv as CTFs or puzzle games. What you consider "annoying" is an activity others do for fun. It's fun to break a system that's intentionally trying to keep you out. That's why I reverse engineer proprietary, obfuscated file formats and protocols. Whether that's brother plotters, blackmagic's input devices (which also function as license dongles), apple video codecs (actually still WIP) or my landlord's wireless water meter so I can add homeassistant support for it. When kernel-level anticheat became a thing, I actually built a custom hardware aimbot out of an HDMI capture card and a custom Sandisk wireless clone that I was working on at the time. I've only used it once or twice, as I'm not a competitive gamer and don't actually have any use for it. The entire fun was in breaking the system.

macNchz 2y ago
> At that point you're playing whack-a-mole, and you'll always lose. That's just sort of fundamental to society at some level though, we play whack a mole with all sorts of misbehavior until we reach some sort of acceptable equilibrium. I totally get the hacker mentality, I have a fully disassembled HP printer under my desk with some bullshit DRM that I've been desperate to break for some time, but I think your last line is really the key: breaking the system is fun for a small portion of people who are able to do it, but it's their users/customers who will be annoyed when their accounts keep getting banned and they need to buy new hardware.
- kuschku 2y ago
  > fully disassembled HP printer under my desk with some bullshit DRM that I've been desperate to break for some time With my brother printers it turned out I could just remove the chips from the genuine toner cartridges, reset the counters, and hot glue them to the refurbished toner. Maybe that works for HP ink as well?
  - macNchz 2y ago
    This printer will simply refuse to print without an always-on connection to their cloud, it's diabolical. Thought I might be able to get root via its crappy web interface but no luck, and it seems to use properly implemented TLS when talking with the verification server, so I've taken it apart to poke at some interesting looking points on the PCB.