5 ms·

Cheating will slowly look more and more like trying to hack your own machine. Secure Boot+TPM combined with decent firmware will make cheating a lot harder. If

by strstr 1y ago

Cheating will slowly look more and more like trying to hack your own machine. Secure Boot+TPM combined with decent firmware will make cheating a lot harder. If the firmware ensures random devices don’t get BME set before the IOMMU is properly, attestably, configured, you are basically now stuck looking for bugs in the TPM and UEFI if you want to shove yourself beneath the OS unnoticed. These are full of bugs, so that will work for a while, until it doesn’t. Popping windows will probably work for some time, but HVCI will make this a pain once ubiquitously required. And you have to do all of this while also not being detected for aberrant behavior. Eventually, the analog hole might end up being easier, lol.

mjg59 1y ago
Which OSes are actually imposing DMA restrictions on internal cards? That feels like something that would impose noticeable overhead, but I guess I can imagine a special mode that enforces this for competitive gaming...
- kbolino 1y ago
  It's not a global on-off switch. With a proper IOMMU, the hypervisor/operating system can lock out specific devices from DMA access, or confine them to specific address ranges.
- strstr 1y ago
  Allegedly some of the anticheats are configuring the IOMMU through Windows APIs (vanguard, faceit, and a smattering of chinese anticheats). It’s hard to find good public information though. They do some mix of blocking access and deliberately leaving some pages as bait (and monitoring iommu d-bits/faults)
  - Deathmax 1y ago
    Riot documents the need to have IOMMU support enabled for Vanguard: https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/22291331362067-Vanguard-Restrictions https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/222...
themafia 1y ago
> will make cheating a lot harder. It can never make it impossible. > These are full of bugs, so that will work for a while, until it doesn’t. You're forgetting that vendors have to implement this into a pretty complicated system already and that configuration space is constantly changing due to new CPUs and other hardware coming into existence. There will always be holes due to emergent configuration and implementation issues. > but HVCI will make this a pain once ubiquitously required. Then there will be new pressure to get at the underlying keys that protect the system. When you consider the size of the keys vs. the size of the reward for liberating them it's obvious how this is going to play out. > And you have to do all of this while also not being detected for aberrant behavior For tournaments I don't understand the problem. Every other modern non computer based sport has this issue. They understand they can't be perfect, and any attempts to do so would ruin the nature of the competition itself, so you're better off recording as much data, video and audio from the player as you possibly can. That way if there are any accusations later you have the data to consider them. This is a race to a corporate controlled future for no particularly good reason.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dist-epoch 1y ago
  > When you consider the size of the keys vs. the size of the reward for liberating them it's obvious how this is going to play out. It's not. The keys for XBox were kept safe for more than a decade now. And not for lack of trying.
  - zb3 1y ago
    > And not for lack of trying. It depends on who tries.. I bet these were just not of interest to Mossad/NSO :)
- ohdeargodno 1y ago
  >Then there will be new pressure to get at the underlying keys that protect the system. just decap your CPU no big deal it just destroys it. Unless you do something stupid and expose, for some reason, a function from the TPM to return the private key (something that basically noone has done in the past 15 years), you're not breaking those keys. It hasn't been broken on a PS5, on an Xbox One, on an iPhone, on the vast majority of Android phones. >Every other modern non computer based sport has this issue. They understand they can't be perfect In every single popular online game right now, hop in on a game, there is a very high chance that one of the players is cheating. From regular scripting in DotA, to aimbotting, to whing, to anything you can imagine. For players, this leads to a frustrating experience. And frustration leads to players leaving the game. Unlike someone cheating at football, which you can personally physically grab and beat the shit out of for ruining the game for others, the best you can do online is leave. For developers, players leaving and a reputation of having cheaters means that your future attempts at making any money through the online portion of your game is dead.

by strstr 1y ago

mjg59 1y ago

Which OSes are actually imposing DMA restrictions on internal cards? That feels like something that would impose noticeable overhead, but I guess I can imagine a special mode that enforces this for competitive gaming...

kbolino 1y ago
It's not a global on-off switch. With a proper IOMMU, the hypervisor/operating system can lock out specific devices from DMA access, or confine them to specific address ranges.
strstr 1y ago
Allegedly some of the anticheats are configuring the IOMMU through Windows APIs (vanguard, faceit, and a smattering of chinese anticheats). It’s hard to find good public information though. They do some mix of blocking access and deliberately leaving some pages as bait (and monitoring iommu d-bits/faults)
- Deathmax 1y ago
  Riot documents the need to have IOMMU support enabled for Vanguard: https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/22291331362067-Vanguard-Restrictions https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/222...

themafia 1y ago

> will make cheating a lot harder. It can never make it impossible. > These are full of bugs, so that will work for a while, until it doesn’t. You're forgetting that vendors have to implement this into a pretty complicated system already and that configuration space is constantly changing due to new CPUs and other hardware coming into existence. There will always be holes due to emergent configuration and implementation issues. > but HVCI will make this a pain once ubiquitously required. Then there will be new pressure to get at the underlying keys that protect the system. When you consider the size of the keys vs. the size of the reward for liberating them it's obvious how this is going to play out. > And you have to do all of this while also not being detected for aberrant behavior For tournaments I don't understand the problem. Every other modern non computer based sport has this issue. They understand they can't be perfect, and any attempts to do so would ruin the nature of the competition itself, so you're better off recording as much data, video and audio from the player as you possibly can. That way if there are any accusations later you have the data to consider them. This is a race to a corporate controlled future for no particularly good reason.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dist-epoch 1y ago
> When you consider the size of the keys vs. the size of the reward for liberating them it's obvious how this is going to play out. It's not. The keys for XBox were kept safe for more than a decade now. And not for lack of trying.
- zb3 1y ago
  > And not for lack of trying. It depends on who tries.. I bet these were just not of interest to Mossad/NSO :)
ohdeargodno 1y ago
>Then there will be new pressure to get at the underlying keys that protect the system. just decap your CPU no big deal it just destroys it. Unless you do something stupid and expose, for some reason, a function from the TPM to return the private key (something that basically noone has done in the past 15 years), you're not breaking those keys. It hasn't been broken on a PS5, on an Xbox One, on an iPhone, on the vast majority of Android phones. >Every other modern non computer based sport has this issue. They understand they can't be perfect In every single popular online game right now, hop in on a game, there is a very high chance that one of the players is cheating. From regular scripting in DotA, to aimbotting, to whing, to anything you can imagine. For players, this leads to a frustrating experience. And frustration leads to players leaving the game. Unlike someone cheating at football, which you can personally physically grab and beat the shit out of for ruining the game for others, the best you can do online is leave. For developers, players leaving and a reputation of having cheaters means that your future attempts at making any money through the online portion of your game is dead.