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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

(mobeigi.com)
379 points mobeigi | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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LinuxAmbulance ◴[16 Oct 24 19:16 UTC] No.41862747[source]▶
Excellent write up and solution. Cheating in video games makes for a wretched experience for those who don't cheat.

It's crazy how rampant cheating in multiplayer games, especially competitive ones has gotten. Ten years ago, I thought it was at an extreme, but it's only gone up since then.

Part of the problem is that for some software developers, writing cheats brings in a massive amount of money.

So instead of some teenager messing around making unsophisticated cheats, you have some devs that are far better at writing cheats than game developers are at preventing them.

It doesn't help that game devs have to secure everything, everywhere, but cheat devs only have to find a single flaw.

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DJBunnies ◴[16 Oct 24 19:26 UTC] No.41862854[source]▶
I think a better question here is: why is game code so exploitable?

A: laziness and cost. It just doesn’t matter the same way that baking code matters, I guess.

So they toss on some cheap anti cheat instead of architecting it safely (expensively.)

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1. numpad0 ◴[16 Oct 24 21:13 UTC] No.41863906[source]▶
Oh, that's an easy one.

- GOOD software are simple and easy to understand, which makes it EASY to cheat.

- BAD software are needlessly complex and finicky, so it's HARD to rig it for a cheat.

- Anti-cheats intentionally make software BAD and over-complicated, so cheaters would have hard time modifying it. But computers are brittle and also aren't smarter than humans so cheaters will eventually find a way.

- Security is completely irrelevant topic since game clients are "bought" and run on your hardware; Digital Restrictions Management built to work against you as user is anti-consumer, anti-right-to-repair, anti-human, super bad thing, and lots of efforts are made to keep PC away from it as much as practical.

It has nothing to do with laziness or cost. If anything it'll be the best programmed game that gets hacked fastest. And PS2 that gets emulated last.