• chevron_right

      AMD pulls graphics driver after “Anti-Lag+” triggers Counter-Strike 2 bans

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 16 October - 15:00 · 1 minute

    The red eyes represent the mark of VAC for Anti-Lag+ players.

    Enlarge / The red eyes represent the mark of VAC for Anti-Lag+ players. (credit: Valve)

    AMD has taken down the latest version of its AMD Adrenalin Edition graphics driver after Counter-Strike 2- maker Valve warned that players using its Anti-Lag+ technology would result in a ban under Valve's anti-cheat rules.

    AMD first introduced regular Anti-Lag mitigation in its drivers back in 2019 , limiting input lag by reducing the amount of queued CPU work when the processor was getting too far ahead of the GPU frame processing. But the newer Anti-Lag+ system—which was first rolled out for a handful of games last month —updates this system by "applying frame alignment within the game code itself," according to AMD. That method leads to additional lag reduction of up to 10 ms, according to AMD's data.

    That additional lag reduction could offer players a bit of a competitive advantage in these games (with the usual arguments about whether that advantage is "unfair" or not). But it's Anti-Lag+'s particular method of altering the "game code itself" that sets off warning bells for the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system. After AMD added Anti-Lag+ support for Counter-Strike 2 in a version 23.10.1 update last week , VAC started issuing bans to unsuspecting AMD users that activated the feature.

    Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      Valve used secret memory access “honeypot” to detect 40K Dota 2 cheaters

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 23 February, 2023 - 21:17

    Artist's conception of Valve's anti-cheat tentacles rising up to catch those caught by its memory honeypot.

    Enlarge / Artist's conception of Valve's anti-cheat tentacles rising up to catch those caught by its memory honeypot. (credit: Valve)

    The cat-and-mouse battle between game makers and cheat makers has seen plenty of inventive twists and turns over the years. Even amid that backdrop, though, Dota 2 stands out for a recently revealed "honeypot" trap hidden inside the game's memory buffer.

    In a blog post this week , Valve revealed the existence of this trap, which was released as part of an earlier update to the game. Valve says that update included "a section of data inside the game client that would never be read during normal gameplay." But that memory could be read by third-party cheat tools that used exploits to sniff out (and share) internal data normally invisible to players.

    To activate its honeypot trap, all Valve had to do was watch for any accounts that tried to read from that "secret" memory area, an event that would lead to "extremely high confidence that every ban was well-deserved," according to Valve.

    Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    • chevron_right

      EA’s new anti-cheat tools dip into the dreaded “kernel mode”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 14 September, 2022 - 16:39

    Artist's conception of EA trying to fake out cheaters with its new tools.

    Enlarge / Artist's conception of EA trying to fake out cheaters with its new tools.

    EA announced its latest salvo in the endless cat-and-mouse battle of PC gaming cheat detection on Tuesday, and the effort prominently features one term sure to raise a red flag for some users: "kernel mode."

    The new kernel-level EA Anti-Cheat (EAAC) tools will roll out with the PC version of FIFA 23 this month, EA announced, and will eventually be added to all of its multiplayer games (including those with ranked online leaderboards). But strictly single-player titles "may implement other anti-cheat technology, such as user-mode protections, or even forgo leveraging anti-cheat technology altogether," EA Senior Director of Game Security & Anti-Cheat Elise Murphy wrote in a Tuesday blog post .

    Unlike anti-cheat methods operating in an OS's normal "user mode," kernel-level anti-cheat tools provide a low-level, system-wide view of how cheat tools might mess with a game's memory or code from the outside. That allows anti-cheat developers to detect a wider variety of cheating threats, as Murphy explained in an extensive FAQ :

    Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments