3 ms·

Wow, not because you know, privacy is important. Becase it is no longer effective

JetSpiegel 13y ago
It's tested locally, Vavle doesn't get the DNS queries.
AimHere 13y ago
Right. Gabe isn't admitting to wrongdoing here, since Valve feels that the particular check was limited enough to be a reasonable countermeasure. According to Gabe, this module was not aimed at scraping anyone's web usage or browsing history (not even for game cheat sites), but just to detect whether a machine was likely to be automatically dialing a hack's DRM server, and then sending hashed copies of those, and only those, entries to Valve to flag as a potential cheat. I can imagine that a lot of the gaming community would consider that reasonable behaviour, if it was effective at cutting down on cheats. Whether Valve is telling the truth, I don't know. I suspect so (Gabe seems smart enough not to try lying to the internet, though, so any deception is likely to be that of omission). Whether this is right or wrong is a matter between you and your shaman/vicar/rabbi/mullah/conscience/etc.
- _delirium 13y ago
  > dialing a hack's DRM server Huh, I didn't realize that nowadays cheat mods charged money and protected themselves with DRM. When I used to dabble in such online games, the cheats/trainers/etc. typically came from the same groups that cracked games' DRM, rather than themselves having DRM. Are there cracking groups that strip DRM from DRM-using cheats?
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    Corporate interest ruin everything, even cheats.
brown9-2 13y ago
VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache. If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers. Sounds like first the cheat process needed to be detected on your system, then the DNS cache would be checked. On the surface it sounded like a privacy issue but with these extra details I am having trouble seeing an issue.

It's tested locally, Vavle doesn't get the DNS queries.

Right. Gabe isn't admitting to wrongdoing here, since Valve feels that the particular check was limited enough to be a reasonable countermeasure. According to Gabe, this module was not aimed at scraping anyone's web usage or browsing history (not even for game cheat sites), but just to detect whether a machine was likely to be automatically dialing a hack's DRM server, and then sending hashed copies of those, and only those, entries to Valve to flag as a potential cheat. I can imagine that a lot of the gaming community would consider that reasonable behaviour, if it was effective at cutting down on cheats. Whether Valve is telling the truth, I don't know. I suspect so (Gabe seems smart enough not to try lying to the internet, though, so any deception is likely to be that of omission). Whether this is right or wrong is a matter between you and your shaman/vicar/rabbi/mullah/conscience/etc.

_delirium 13y ago
> dialing a hack's DRM server Huh, I didn't realize that nowadays cheat mods charged money and protected themselves with DRM. When I used to dabble in such online games, the cheats/trainers/etc. typically came from the same groups that cracked games' DRM, rather than themselves having DRM. Are there cracking groups that strip DRM from DRM-using cheats?
- JetSpiegel 13y ago
  Corporate interest ruin everything, even cheats.

brown9-2 13y ago

VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache. If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers. Sounds like first the cheat process needed to be detected on your system, then the DNS cache would be checked. On the surface it sounded like a privacy issue but with these extra details I am having trouble seeing an issue.