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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

(mobeigi.com)
379 points mobeigi | 2 comments | 16 Oct 24 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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snarfy ◴[16 Oct 24 19:21 UTC] No.41862807[source]▶
For UT2004, you can ban by player GUID (a hash of the CD key) or IP. With the game abandoned by Epic, a number of key generators have cropped up, which makes GUID bans useless. IP bans only go so far with VPNs costing $2 these days.

The main solutions we have today are IP ban + VPN blocking using a database of known VPN subnets and adding them all to the firewall, and a similar fingerprinting technique which scans their folder structure of certain system folders.

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ghxst ◴[16 Oct 24 19:51 UTC] No.41863123[source]▶
This still leaves you wide open to cheaters using mobile data tethering and proxies. Have you considered more advanced network analysis? It's one of the areas I have an interest in (professionally and personally) so if you want any suggestions let me know.
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kelnos ◴[16 Oct 24 20:00 UTC] No.41863193[source]▶
> This still leaves you wide open to cheaters using mobile data tethering and proxies

Is latency going to be good enough on mobile data (especially if they're also using proxies) for a FPS, though? Sure, they're using cheating software, but I wouldn't be surprised if the software gets the information it needs to cheat too late often enough for it to be useful.

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jjmarr ◴[16 Oct 24 22:08 UTC] No.41864336{3}[source]▶
I regularly played CSGO in Europe because the North American ranking system were screwed up.

I got to Supreme (2nd highest rank) with 150 ms ping. The people I queued with hit Global.

It's possible to play legitimately with very high ping. The higher ping put us at a disadvantage, but the skill gap between regions made it worth it to arbitrage.

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Systemmanic ◴[16 Oct 24 22:18 UTC] No.41864406{4}[source]▶
What was screwed up about the NA ranks?
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1. xnyan ◴[16 Oct 24 22:57 UTC] No.41864719{5}[source]▶
NA is (or at least was when I played) the most populated and visible regional zone, and attracts a lot of players attempting various kinds of rank manipulation. On the one hand you have smurfing, which is the practice of a relatively high skill player using a an account with relatively low rank so that they can dominate lower ranked players. On the other side you have boosting, which is a relatively high skill player ranking up new accounts for later sale.

In practice this means at lower ranks, it was not at all uncommon to be matched with players with similar rank but vastly better skills.

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2. ultimafan ◴[16 Oct 24 23:16 UTC] No.41864866[source]▶
This was my experience too years ago when I played CSGO. The difficulty at higher ranks (up to a certain point) felt significantly easier than the lower ranks. Getting out of the silver and gold ranks (can't remember the exact names) was a hellish grind with lots of matches that ended in one sided stomps with one or two guys on the other team racking up some insane k/d. Past that was smooth sailing for a long long way.