Doom Eternal's Anti-cheat installs a driver to ring-0 kernel | Hacker News Reader

Doom Eternal's Anti-cheat installs a driver to ring-0 kernel

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45 pointsfriendlybus21 comments

Ya know, I constantly hear arguments about why things like this are necessary and how cheaters are ruining games, yet I play an online game that's supposedly full of cheaters, to the point where the Devs themselves sent out an apology and asked for cheaters to be reported, yet i've never really noticed it. There's definitely been a couple times I'm pretty sure someone's cheating, but after the game ends I don't really care any more and I just start a new one.

I dunno, I mean I grew up in the wild west of online games where pretty much games got taken over by hackers to the point where you couldn't play unless you hacked too. Modern games by comparison are far better to play in that regards, even ones apparently full of hackers. You've never seen hacking until you've stepped into a diablo 2 open battlenet server and somehow managed to die in town on spawning and then had your save file corrupted when you accidently picked up the glitched item next to your corpse and even when you had a full set of items hacked to the point where you needed a magnifying glass to read what it does and your on screen character is glitched beyond recognition, some motherfucker comes up and one shots you.

Do note hacking typically takes place in higher ranks since that's where the cheaters typically end up. The vast majority of players that play in the lower ranks only encounter the cheaters as they climb the ranks which presumably happens rather quick compared to non-cheaters.

Similar posts from last month about League of Legends and Valorant:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22855600

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22230168

Does this prevent me from inspecting memory on my own machine?

It's pretty crummy this is released after the fact. I could see this affecting people's purchasing decision if it had shipped with the game.

I removed it from my wishlist. I only play SP and there are plenty other games by editors who didn't take such shortcuts...

Ironically, Bethesda had regained some goodwill recently because they published some of their titles on GOG (therefore DRM-free) some months ago, but this new move just erased it, especially by doing this as an update (to avoid bad press at launch).

I am not a fan of software that taints the OS in this manor. While I do not play Doom on Linux, I suppose the way I would address this would be to PXE boot a Doom specific image and persist writable directories into a Doom specific NFS or CIFS share. That might be too much effort for folks that just want to play a game however. It works great for lab setups that require bare metal.

System-security-compromising anti-cheat spyware? What happened to IDKFA?

Run it on a game only computer, reformat when done playing.

Next step is to buy a game console for the deepest lack of control over your system.

Stuff like this makes me glad that I use my gaming PC for almost nothing but gaming.

It’s weird how much access our games have to our systems. I always assumed that they were at least a little sandboxed until I started working in my unity game and found I could read/write any file anywhere I tested

We need to stop supporting devs who don't respect our security + privacy.

That's good.

Signed: CSGO player who's tired of cheaters.

Insane suggestion: play with groups of friends.

Or, rootkityour machine to open it to random devs who may (or may not!) be able to be trusted to secure their own deployment/update servers......

What does playing with friends do about cheaters on the enemy team? Unless you mean exclusively friend vs friend, which isn't a good replacement for a regional ladder in general

I don't know any regional ladder that could convince me to rootkit my machine.

This whole concept is just too inane for me to grasp, if I'm honest.

Funny you mention CSGO.

I think the CSGO anti-cheat implementation, which consists of VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) to catch the obvious cheats, the reporting and reviewing system (think it was called Overwatch) and the new trust/reputation system, is actually an overall much more acceptable solution than a high-privileged kernel driver.

I think the reason people go straight to something like an anti-cheat driver first is that they think "technology created this problem, therefore technology must fix it", despite the fact that the only possible ways to "fix" it using technology requires dangerous/invasive technologies, when what is really needed is a social solution.

Unfortunately, too often those who don't fully understand the implications of say "Lets install a program with full R/W access to the computer to fix this" or "Lets get rid of all encryption on the internet" are the ones making the rules.

/rant

This comment kind of grew beyond scope, so sorry about that.

Edit for clarity/formatting.

Couldn't agree more. Sometimes you do encounter cheaters, but it has become less and less over the years. However, with the recent CSGO source code (from an older version) dump I wonder what new exploits will arise.

For context, the largest alternative client for CSGO (and previous iterations) was ESEA in North America. ESEA released a client that used their user's hardware to mine bitcoins [1]. These users also put up with lpkane for years who was quite dismissive or hostile towards any concerns regarding the service. There was even a good bit of speculation that anti-cheat staff were accessing user files.

I agree with Valve's approach with CSGO but the state of gaming and community acceptance has been trending towards more invasive measures in the name of dealing with cheaters for a while.

Valorant is currently on my system, which is understandably built for being a competitive esport game,but now Doom Eternal? Who is playing Doom Eternal that competitively?

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/2/4292672/esea-gaming-networ...

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