5 ms·
Nice to see anti-cheats working and protecting Linux players from hacks, by preventing them from actually playing the game.
by butz 10mo ago
Nice to see anti-cheats working and protecting Linux players from hacks, by preventing them from actually playing the game.
- sylware 10mo ago"kernel anti-cheat" is actually a re-branding of "anti-(non steamdeck)-linux" software, probably to please msft (since sole beneficiary). We all know they are inefficient and weaponized by hackers. You know on linux there is a feature for a process to snoop into another process, that for the same user (non root), can be use for anti-tampering: with a proper "security" team, as all live-service games should have, you can give hell to hackers without a kernel module...
- firtoz 10mo agoHow trivial is it to pretend to be a steam deck?
- Thaxll 10mo agoKernel anti cheat in the client are the strongest form of protection by far, your comment makes no sense, anything userspace is easily spoofed. You can create a driver ( module ) that intercept calls and that is completely invisible to userspace processes. The default security measures on Linux are pretty bad compared to windows, it's not even close. People like to bash windows but they have a way better security model.
- sylware 10mo ago1 - kernel module from anti-cheats are weaponized by hackers. 2 - if I recall properly, that linux feature is a direct mapping of the target user process allowing extreme dynamicity in time, performant, and much more powerfull mechanisms than basic 'calls'. Namely hell for hackers if a live service game has a proper "security" team, all that without a kernel module.
- dijit 10mo agoWhat are you even talking about? The parent is right. I'm quite literally the first person to bash Windows for being a shitty operating system, but the requirement for signed modules puts a massive barrier to entry for cheaters, where Linux can load just about anything. If every system call can lie to you, there's a few things you can do, but it's not many. I know this because I've actually done a lot of due diligence on anti-cheat. One mechanism I attempted to employ was to replay initalisation vectors and determinism of inputs; this means I could replay your session out of band and witness the same outcomes. If there was variation then there's a fault. Except as soon as you introduce floating point numbers there's no more determinism... Oh well. The other was to watch for "impossible" things, but then you need to run full complex physics simulations for every client. If your game requires you to effectively buy an i7-11700k for every user then you'd have to sell your game for a lot more money, and limit how long they can play - nobody wants this. The third option was to score our best players and anyone who performs better than that gets their behaviour tracked. The problem is, coming up with a scoring system that's server side is much harder than you think. GameDevs don't actually like paying a shit load of money for anti-cheat (that also breaks their debugging systems and causes bugs: a wonderful combination)... so if you've got a better way: join the industry and fix it. You'll be a moderately wealthy person.
- sylware 10mo agoWhat are you talking about? 1 - kernel anti-cheats ARE weaponized by hackers. This is not a matter of discussion unless you are into the AI generated HN news conspiracy. 2 - this linux feature should provide (if I recall properly) a very complex and flexible (not limited to "calls"), and performant, set of interactions between a set of anti-cheat processes and the set of game processes. All that as being non-root priviledge (I think you must be have the same effective user id). The actual and real parameter is the level of competence and creativity of the "anti-cheat" team which is a requirement of any "live-service games" with frequent updates. 3 - for FPS games where aiming skill is critical, anti-cheat are close to useless due to "external" AI based aim assist hardware.
- well_ackshually 10mo agoMan, even "Area 51 has aliens" is a better and more backed up conspiracy theory than this. Kernel AC isn't to please MS, nor is it to shit on Linux/Steam Deck. They don't matter. They're inexistent. They're a blip of very vocal users that keep believing that Proton is going to save them from EA making shit games. KACs exist because they want to have higher privileges to not be injected into, closed or otherwise touched by any other process. That's also why a bunch of them have started to ask for Secure Boot, so that they can guarantee at least some chain of trust that ensures you've probably not tampered with your machine. Your Linux example 1/ turns anti cheats into not only something that analyzes what runs on your machine, but actively tries to attack it, which is the textbook definition of malware, but also a gigantic liability should you happen to say, write into word.exe because you fucked up and thought it was a cheat. 2/ turns it into an infinite game of chasing each others with you injecting into cheats, cheats injecting into you, back and forth. In addition, you're running on an actively hostile machine with a hostile user that _wants_ to fuck over your anti cheat. Please do some proper research on the subject.
- sylware 10mo agoA user level anti-tampering software (and more with such linux feature) is not a kernel module which is weaponized by hackers.
- not_a9 10mo ago> We all know they are inefficient and weaponized by hackers. Name an exploit in EAC/BattlEye/Vanguard/FaceIT/whatever other big name anticheat middleware (though Vanguard and FaceIT don’t sell their services I think) that has actually been used for anything. Genshin Impact’s driver got used as a vulnerable driver that one time, yeah. EAC had an exploit to inject your own code into processes, but that quickly got patched (https://blog.back.engineering/10/08/2021/ https://blog.back.engineering/10/08/2021/).
- Aerroon 10mo agoESEA's anticheat was used to mine Bitcoin on the players' computers. They are/were a major competitor of FaceIt. They supposedly had to pay a $1 million settlement over it. So not an exploit, but even worse.
- sylware 10mo agoWell, I read HN. I did stop counting. Unless you beleive in the conspiracy of AI generated news on HN. You are the same type of guys who is going to try to sell 'computer security' as a deliverable, thing which does not exist. Please, stop that.
- cedws 10mo agoGames using Easy AntiCheat can opt in to Linux support. Arc Raiders runs on Linux (but not in VMs) whereas Fortnite does not, because Epic has chosen not to support Linux. Ironic given Tim Sweeney's supposed anti-monopoly stance.
- bhargav 10mo ago> Ironic given Tim Sweeney's supposed anti-monopoly stance. This doesn't really make sense. If you are implying he is FOR monopoly, he would want the game on every possible platform right? He loses money by not having more players playing his game.
- brookst 10mo agoSweeney isn’t anti-monopoly, he’s pro-Sweeney. He sees an opportunity to let others do the work and investment to build platforms, then selectively swoop in to compete once the risk and investment pay off. It’s not a bad business model if he can get the courts on his side: let others spend billions and take risks, then cherry pick the successful platforms and compete with their distribution using a cost basis that doesn’t have those up-front costs and risks.
- michaelt 10mo ago> He sees an opportunity to let others do the work and investment to build platforms, then selectively swoop in to compete once the risk and investment pay off. Sure. Just as long as you agree Google and Apple let others do the work and investment to develop new games, apps and media, then swoop in and demand a cut if the risk and investment pay off.
- Thaxll 10mo agoThis hack has nothing to do with client cheats.
- Aurornis 10mo agoThese changes are occurring in a server backend database. They’re not client side cheats. The people receiving the credits aren’t even the ones initiating the changes. Also many anti-cheat packages do have Linux versions. The primary reason you’re not getting ports for Linux is because companies don’t want to do the port and support all versions of Linux clients they would encounter in the very tiny number of additional installs.
- netbioserror 10mo agoProton is a single build target, and it's just the Windows build target.
- reactordev 10mo agoExactly, this argument wasn’t a good one 10 years ago and it definitely isn’t one now.
- tpxl 10mo agoValve maintains a 'Steam Runtime', which is similar to a docker container, to ensure it's easy to develop games that run on many distributions.
- mschuster91 10mo agoThe problem is kernel level cheats, can't defend against those from pure userland.