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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

(mobeigi.com)
379 points mobeigi | 3 comments | 16 Oct 24 18:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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IncreasePosts ◴[16 Oct 24 22:03 UTC] No.41864302[source]▶
How about just a whitelist? I can't imagine there are a ton of legit ut2k4 players left?
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snarfy ◴[16 Oct 24 22:12 UTC] No.41864358[source]▶
Yes, we have a whitelist ability also, but it is definitely a last resort. The game is mostly dead and difficult to discover for new players. We don't want that roadblock if we can avoid it.
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1. matheusmoreira ◴[17 Oct 24 06:32 UTC] No.41866968[source]▶
Small number of players works in favor of a whitelist. People shouldn't be playing with randoms, they should be playing with friends.

Game companies invade our privacy and destroy our computer freedom with ineffective malware tier rootkit solutions only to fail to solve the problem in the end. Their business model depends on enabling people to play with any random from anywhere in the world. They are forced to trust untrustworthy clients. The truth is people should not allow their computers to talk to strangers.

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2. klausa ◴[17 Oct 24 06:37 UTC] No.41866990[source]▶
>People shouldn't be playing with randoms, they should be playing with trusted friends.

People should be able to play with whomever they wish.

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3. matheusmoreira ◴[17 Oct 24 06:51 UTC] No.41867059[source]▶
I presume "whomever they wish" means anyone who is not a cheater. In that case they need a whitelist. Because without one, every player is a potential cheater. Non-whitelist solutions don't match what I presume they want. They asked for NotCheater, server returned MaybeCheater.

Without a whitelist, it's only a matter of time before an actual cheater joins their server and ruins their fun.

Enumerating badness just doesn't work.