Begun the kernel wars have
Begun the kernel wars have
Battledield now throwing an error because Valorant is already sitting in kernel memory. Time to buy your EA Battlefield PC but don't forget your Valorant PC
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Games dont belong in the kernel. Shit should have stayed in userspace. No, I dont care how many billions are on the line, games are not that important.
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alternative: Games do not belong on computers that do non-game things.
Anyway, this is going to be resolved as soon as north korea finds out who many people have important stuff on PC they game on, and hack some hapless devs source to install a rootkit on 100m PCs via steam.
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Yes they do. If I want games and non games on my PC then that is up to me, I am the fucking admin.
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Bait used to be believable.
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I don't think you understand people don't have money to buy one computer to work, one to play, or a console to play. People are cheap that way, when it comes to food or a gaming console they choose food.
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I guess only Nintendo is allowed to release games then.
Sony can't, Playstation has a web browser and therefore games do not belong on it.
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Isn't Microsoft about to block kernel modules like this entirely? I thought I read that somewhere
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Yeah, to stop another CrowdStrike, but it's not a sure thing, yet there's talk of api's etc and wouldn't surprise me if certain companies got a pass. An article covering your point: https://www.theverge.com/news/692637/microsoft-windows-kernel-antivirus-changes
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I hope so much that this will happen.
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Nope. They’re developing an alternative set of APIs for userspace in conjunction with security vendors for their products to use but it’s all still a long way off and will be optional to start with.
Given the volume of mission-critical devices security products are installed on (which the CrowdStrike fuckup highlighted), getting them out of kernel space would be a huge risk reduction for the world. And security vendors would love to get away from that risk as pulling a CrowdStrike costs a lot of money setting things right with customers.
But an anticheat used by consumers on their personal devices for a game, not such a big deal.
While I’m sure MS will eventually deprecate and then kill off third party kernel drivers, it could take a decade since MS has so much business (both internal and within their customer base) that relies on legacy crap.
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These anti-cheats don't even work. Anyone can go out and buy a hardware DMA card with an FPGA on it, which is basically a modern day Action Replay. It has full access to RAM without touching the OS and cheaters like to use them to get around anti-cheat.
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You can also still get everything working in software.
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You just put me on a rabbit hole of looking at what FPGA means. Are these cheaters buying their cards already made? Learning such magic to cheat in games seems very weird.
Is "Mister FPGA" an FPGA because it can reprogram its "internal logic" to be as the gaming chips from the consoles?
How come people know so much? Dang here I thought being a computer wizard was one thing and you shattered my expectations-
An FPGA is essentially a reprogrammable computer chip, or integrated circuit (IC), that can behave as another computer chip. It is widely used in the development of new ICs.
The MiSTer FPGA project uses an off-the-shelf Altera DE10-nano development board, which has a combo FPGA + ARM SoC on it. The OS, USB controller input, and some other stuff runs on the ARM core, and the FPGA is reprogrammed upon launching a core to behave as closely as possible to the original hardware that it's emulating.
FPGAs can either be pre-programmed or programmed on-the-fly. In consumer hardware, FPGAs and CPLDs (essentially weak FPGAs) are used when you need an IC produced in small scale, or when you need to be able to change the functionality of the IC with updates.
People know so much because they take the time to learn, and it does take a lot of time and patience.
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or adjust it is settings
Good job EA
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I feel I would rather just opt out of playing these games. It ain't worth it.
I feel like they should just host the entire game and stream it to players if they want to eliminate cheating, but that's probably the most anti-SKG way to publish a game possible. Oh well.
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Actually makes it easier to write aimbots and triggerbots, since you'll have the video feed and can respond with the right inputs. Skips the step where you've got to film the monitor on the machine that's 'playing' the game, which is protected by the HDCP between the PC and the screen.
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Good point. Guess it's hopeless?
To be honest I haven't thought about this much because playing online games with strangers is not something I enjoy in the first place. I'm sure others have good ideas, though.
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The types of cheats that anti cheat in kernel space are trying to detect don’t view the video feed as such. They hook the process directly to read the memory, and the chest developer has reverse engineered the game binary to find out what variables correspond to things like opposing players, then using that information they draw stuff like wall hacks on the screen.
But yeah I guess an fps developer could move to a GeForce now type of model to eliminate cheats like that, but then no one would play that fps because of the input lag issues.
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Does anti-cheat even work?
kernel or no
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Proof is in cheaters existing on day one of battlefield 6 open beta. Client side anti-cheat will never work. It's good to have some basic preventative measures client-side, but server-side anti cheat is the only way to properly prevent cheaters.
Unfortunately companies keep investing in garbage client side anticheat that just pokes security holes into our machines.
Only Valve to my knowledge is investing money into their server side anti cheat, no other big player is to my knowledge.
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It needs to be a mix. Have your clientside anti-cheat look for obvious attack vectors, have your serverside anti-cheat look for suspicious play, and let users report others. Then have humans review suspected cheaters and make the final call.
But that's expensive, and off-the-shelf anti-cheat gives them someone else to blame.
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Web developers work this out years ago. If you want to put content behind a paywall don't do it client side because it will get bypassed.
This was me working out of a tiny office. Yet apparently I was more advanced than AAA game developers.
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Valves anti-cheat doesn't really do anything though, at least not in CS2. It does like to boot me from the game from time to time because I'm playing on Linux though.
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That's only proof that it will never be enough to stop all cheating. But if the metric is if it reduces cheating then that proves nothing. Not saying I have proof that it does reduce cheating but I would personally bet on it reducing it somewhat at least.
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Client side anti-cheat (the one installed on your PC) will never work, it's just fundamentally impossible. They can restrict user freedom as much as they want, but the hardware still isn't under their control.
The only reason they push for those kinds of anti-cheats is because they don't have to pay for the extra processing of server side anti-cheat, and they also get the benefit of a backdoor into your computer that you may never fully uninstall without buying a new computer.
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... Or installing Linux.
flyes away
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I mean, it’s like saying Pentagon security can’t work because some skilled hackers can someday find a way to spoof / steal credentials. Security always happens on a sliding scale based on the value of the contents.
I think at the very least, they can take steps that inconvenience hackers sufficiently each update without harming players - they can’t make it impossible to hack on the client side, but they can’t make it feel not worth it for them.
The reason I sort of insist on it is that even with serverside checks for game logic like teleportation and instant kills, game engines still load the data for player positions which allow for wallhacks and aimhacks. Those checks can only happen clientside; you can’t even send mouse positions often enough to look for “snaps”.
At the least, I agree that modern coders have gotten very lazy about having the server verify basic actions. “Okay, player 22 deals 8000 damage to every other player in the server simultaneously? Okay.”
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It only works in so far that it makes making cheats harder to create and easier to detect. But it will never fully eliminate or catch all cheats.
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Some of it does, some of it doesn't, the critique is that kernel level stuff is way more than needed against most cheaters but not enough against the most dedicated ones, and it is invasive as hell.
The best anticheat is good netcode and server side checks. You can't wallhack if your client doesn't see behind the walls.
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Anecdotally, there seem to be fewer valorant cheaters than in counter strike.
Idk if that can be chalked up to "valorant uses kernel and cs doesn't", though. Probably not. And it's still nonzero for valorant.
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It boggles my mind so many people give a shit about these awful franchises. Surely there is something else to play
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Sure. And when your entire friend group starts playing one of them, you can either join in, or see if you can wait out their interest.
Or did you think everyone games in a bubble?
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Yeah, I remember this with CoD.
Everyone I knew was on console through. Are people cross playing these days? Or using PC more?
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There is an audience for such games. Mainly for them to blow off steam and try to see if they're a better crack shot than anyone, and sometimes to acquire a degree of fame. They have spent enormous amounts of money hoping to land more shots at a higher framerate.
I'm now more content quietly playing an offline sandbox game, no rush at all.
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Arasaka vs Militech humble beginnings
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EA wishes they were even close to that competent.
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Its*. This word is an exception to the rule of using an apostrophe to indicate possession. It's is always a contraction for "it is".
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I didn't even catch that the first time. But what should we expect from garbage software?
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It's not an exception. Pronouns never have apostrophes for possessive.
His. Hers. Theirs. Its.
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My son wanted to play the Battlefield open beta over the weekend. It legitimately took me 4 hours to get their shitty kernel anti-cheat shit working. I can't imagine the average non-technical person being able to do that just to play a game.
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What's funny is battlefield to me was always just a chill game I used to play to do whatever. More for fun and blowing off steam with very little consequence of death. Like if someone was cheating in battlefield i hardly ever care. I also don't remember a huge ranked or competitive scene for the battlefield genre but I could be ootl cause I haven't played since 4
Compared to games like Tarkov or DayZ which have a lot more consequence tied to death.
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I came home pre early access and saw that I could play if I just watched some stream on twitch for 30 minutes. So I did. Got the code and it did not work. Started up the game and it was locked until early access/ next day.
Went to bed and tried again on early access. Now the game won't even start, claiming it needs secure boot to be on. I have secure boot on.
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You could also just not play games that think they are allowed to access the kernel at all. Seems safer, more affordable, and basically without downside. They aren't even that good of games.
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They aren't even that good of games.
Hard copium there
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I think the point is there are a lot of excellent shooters to choose from.
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Yes because I truly love my shooters becoming more and more homogenized. Counter strike with hero abilities!?!? Oh my GOD let me spend 100's of dollars on skins yes PLEASE Riot. Battlefield but it's more like CoD? YES daddy DICE PLEASE spit in my mouth again, I love the taste.
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*its settings.
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As someone who will likely need to move to Linux after windows 10 goes dark can anybody ELI5 or maybe a little older, TIA
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This is windows, So Valorant is running its anticheat stopping Battlefields anti-cheat from starting up. Meaning you will have to pick one game as they all seem to start from boot though other sources have said the games have to be running.
In Linux you could prob just run a pass-through in a couple of VMs. But Linux itself doesn't work with most of these anti-cheats so by default no one running Linux is exposed to this sort of thing.
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In Linux you could prob just run a pass-through in a couple of VMs.
So instead of having trouble with drivers for your one GPU, you can have it with two. Awesome.
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I'm not an expert, but it sounds like if you finish a session of valorant, the anti cheat never unloads and continues to monitor memory and files.
Easy Anticheat though, according so some sources, only runs during game play.
Riots Anticheat has a bad history though. But both essentially are black boxes that send details both hash and samples back to their owners for them to approve what's on it computer. Opened a medical record? It's probably been hashed and sent back.
Opened your employers accounting files when working from home? details you probably sent riot a copy.
Both can be updated. There's no guarantees that riot won't do something nasty against a portion of high value targets. They know you from your payment details. They can identify, update the module and get anything they like, they have root.
Anticheat has a history of being a tool for hackers. https://www.vice.com/en/article/hackers-are-using-anti-cheat-in-genshin-impact-to-ransom-victims/
There's no upside for the user. Mostly because they don't work anyway.
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These games won't run on Linux.
They do this to prevent cheaters, and it is effective. Some people who have no problems running any other executable that can do just as much damage believe this load on boot style is too invasive.
I wouldn't mind this feature dying so I could play on Linux though.
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This is pretty crazy it has gotten to this point.
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What's even crazier is that I saw methods on bypassing kernel level anticheats 5 years ago. The BF6 kernel level anticheat was bypassed in the first hours of beta.
It seems wildly dangerous for the almost no effect it brings to the table when it comes to cheat sellers.
EDIT: IMO the future are AI anticheats, something to similar in what we sas in Battlefield 4. It doesn't stand on your PC, it analyzes your playing behaviour on server side and bans you if you're sus. I'm not talking about LLMs, but deep learning anti-cheat.
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You can always use hardware cheats. You can use a second device to read memory and video feed, then pass back ESP information directly onto the monitor, or even control inputs.
I wouldn't be surprised if such devices are already available for mainstream consumers. Kernel-level anticheat is a joke.
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That's actually super funny to me.
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With Linux, that's impossible. However, I will say that you won't need to worry about these privacy invading rootkits disguising themselves as anti-cheats (Ricochet, EA's Ring 0 malware, EAC, Battleye, etc.).
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Just compile your kernel with the anti cheat flags and telemetry enabled from source.
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What does it mean to "adjust it is settings"?
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This only happens if you're running both games at the same time. Still not great but not as bad as it looks.
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it's
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It s
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between the toxic communities, over monetization, and this kind of crap, I have been done with online competitive games for years. Anti-Cheating is going to always be a cat and mouse game, with the cheaters winning all the time. Anti-Cheat will always be reacting to whatever the new method of cheating is and humans are very innovative when they want to be.
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It’s a shame, they won’t get my money
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Upvote for the desktop background.
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Oooohhhh Elden Ring!
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ive heard valorant have to be uninstalled, and ive alao heard that you cant run both games at the same time. which one is it? and why should care with a pc with disabled tpm2
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Soon you will only be able to play on certified monitors with anticheat tampering built in. They 100% guarunteed will not be backdoored or phone home, pinky promise, it is certain.
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War...war never changes.
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Them insisting on having match making for the main modes was my red line. While this nonsense is not a deal breaker for me, as I almost always tryhard a single multiplayer game at a time anyway if I'm playing multiplayer at all. This sounds like I'm dodging another future headache whenever the next game insists on kernel level anti-cheat though.
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Ramp it up. The sooner we pull out of the kernel the sooner I dump windows
Soooo, you’re telling me, that if I want to use a NVIDIA graphics card in Linux, I am not allowed to load its official driver's kernel modules unless I either deactivate secure boot or generate my own signing key and load it into the UEFI, as otherwise this would make the kernel untrusted. But on windows every $randomgamepublisher is allowed to run at kernel level without it being considered untrusted?
Who could have foreseen that letting game companies into the kernel would cause problems?
let $random_game_publisher = "Ubisoft"; print("But on windows every {$random_game_publisher} is allowed...?"); > But on windows every Ubisoft is allowed...?I'd like to report an issue with your code.
Well, see, there's your problem. You handcrafted this code carefully, but didn't think about today's coding standards. That's outdated code you use. Why use a simple print with variable substitutions, if you can instead just vibe print it by sending a rough description what your program tries to output to an LLM to account for such possible errors! /s