Vanguard takes screenshots of your PC every time you play a game. Every time you play a game a function is called to screenshot your PC’s screen, in case Vanguard thinks you might have something suspicious, it screenshots your ENTIRE PC screen (all monitors).
Edit: Not trying to spread false info this was shared to me via a friend and there is other data to back up that this is real https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/634974-vanguard-taking-screenshot-pc.html
https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/valorant/484475-vanguard-screenshots.html
Many people criticize that, but I can’t really think of any non invasive solution to draw away cheaters, except making specialized device to play the game (sort of PS4 to play one single game only?), but pretty sure it won’t take long for cheat providers to crack it as well… Sadly.
Server-Side Anticheat. The Minecraft community has been doing it ALL ON THEIR OWN for YEARS, effectively.
Yep, This is the way.
Yep, there are mods for Minecraft that warn you that certain of their functions will trigger anticheat if used on a server (so only use those features only in single player, where your server doesn’t care if you cheat)
Pretty sure it’s crazy expensive on a large scale, I don’t think that people will pay monthly fee to keep playing apex/val/insert game. And more than sure these companies will try to force players to pay for it :/ Previously I had a small chat with aimlabs devs about application of neural networks for it (detecting weird patterns and irregularities, that what NNs are good at as well) but as I understood it would be expensive as well since obviously you want to run the model on your backend’s side… It’s and endless war between both sides without silver bullet ATM and I don’t really understand why people are so mad about my comment lol
Hypixel is fucking massive and finances this purely of off cosmetics for the most part, with Hypixel having developed their own custom server-side anticheat solution
Oh, they also don’t use neural networks for this.
They’re big but not even close to goliaths, their 24h online is at 40k more or less, which is nothing like CSGO or apex… Their all time high is less than apex daily active sadly.
I’m not saying their system is bad, but I am saying that it is still not tested for a large scale though.
server side anticheat is the only ultimate solution.
all client side anticheat measures will have vulnerabilities that will be found and people will cheat. (look at DMA pci cards, for instance)
How would a server side anti-cheat prevent a DMA exploit?
Don’t send opponents location until they are visible for example. That way a wallhack won’t work.
That literally doesn’t work for faster fps games
it simply wouldn’t trust the client with anything the player shouldn’t know, to minimize cheating potential. valorant does this, and made a blog post about it. also, player movement could be analyzed server side to attempt to distiguish between cheating and legit.
I think client side invasive anti cheat is likely more effective than this, but its a cat and mouse game. if the anticheat was server side and good, there isn’t anything to attack
The problem is, most game devs are lazy and would rather offload the expensive compute required to catch cheaters onto the client instead of coming up with server side methods that work. I follow a game dev on youtube, and that’s one of the things he goes on about at times. Dude is a security researcher and had a lot of time doing that for Blizzard, so I’m pretty sure he knows his shit.
Also there’s a fundamental fog of war of what your anti-cheat can see. Valorant cheaters are using hardware cheats, that literally takes in a video output, analyzes it, and sends in mouse inputs, on a different computer, the anti-cheat straight up can’t see it, they only see there’s a video out and a mouse in. Ultimately, having physical access of a hardware and you can just tell the software whatever you want it to see.
Kernel anticheat also doesn’t work, Valorant is full of cheaters, and Apex Legends players had their game remotely hacked installing cheat software mid tournament match. And an increasing number of cheats bypass the computer/console all together, and replace inputs to the computer to allow macros or aim-botting. Recently a monitor was announced for league of legends that will track enemy players movement and location for you from the video feed alone.
The best way to prevent cheating are with good server side anticheat. Another possibility is that companies can offer secure computers through a live streaming service like Geforce Now, which would be more secure than kernel anticheat without any of the privacy issues.
As far as I know there is no evidence to support the fact that the hack was installed remotely. It’s much more likely that it was a targeted attack where they gained access to the compromised system some other way, then waited for the tournament to act.
But I agree with you that there is also plenty of evidence pointing to cheaters getting past kernel level anti cheat in games like valorant and continuing to cheat.
I’m not entirely clear, but it sounds like the hacked Apex games were on computers at different locations, which would make me think they were likely hacked remotely without physical access to the hardware. The hacker claimed he performed the hack by using a vulnerability in the game process, and that his hacking method only let him compromise the game and didn’t give him any access to the people’s PC itself. The developers said that it was EAC itself being exploited, but that the specific exploit shouldn’t allow him access to owner’s PC.
The combination of statements makes me think this was a remote hack that exploited vulnerabilities in EAC/Apex Legends. Thankfully there seeming wasn’t an escalation to give full access to the PC, but considering the level of access that kernel anticheat has I would be very concerned about the possibility for any future hacks that compromise anticheat systems.
I might be ootl, but as far as we know, wasn’t EAC ruled out? I recall watching Pirate Software’s videos breaking everything down, and iirc, it was more likely that the individual computers were compromised at some point than it was remote code execution. Though it was still up in the air what the hacker could do, as they seemed to be able to send commands the server would accept (eg, gifting thousands of packs to steamers live on stream). Been a while since I watched, and the vids are also hours long so I don’t expect anyone else to sit through it, but here’s the first if anyone’s interested. Apex Legends Vulnerabilities - Breakdown and Interview
I don’t know exactly, I was just referencing what was said in the article I linked above, which has quotes and statements linked from both the hacker and some apex/eac teams.