[maccard]

The difference in effort, for a cheater, between installing a cheat as a user process and a kernel driver is about one button click.

I can decide to cheat, stick my CC info into a website and download a program in less than 5 minutes. To get hardware I need to provide my shipping info and wait a couple of days. If the hardware is banned, I need to wait a few days before my replacement hardware is there, or with software I just update and restart.

It's not an all or nothing thing, it's a game of cat and mouse. The aim isn't to completely stamp out cheaters at any cost, it's to raise the bar sufficiently high to make it so that enough games aren't destroyed by cheaters.

[prvit]

> If the hardware is banned, I need to wait a few days before my replacement hardware is there, or with software I just update and restart.

Except perhaps the first few iterations, the hardware won’t be banned. You’ll just have to load a software update for your DMA hardware.

[maccard]

Great, so for the first few iterations hardware bans are effevtive!

[prvit]

Those first few iterations are already happening.

[cowtools]

How could the cheating hardware be banned? it is general-purpose, there is no change in the programming of the host computer that couldn't be combated by reprogramming the cheating device.

Security-by-obscurity is a game of cat-and-mouse where the cat is blind and the mouse is invulnerable.

[maccard]

The hardware isn't banned, the player is banned if the anticheat detects the hardware being used. The hardware might be reprogrammable and self modifying at some point in the future, but until it is and it's widely available a root level anticheat is adequate protection.

[cowtools]

The player is not banned. The player's account is banned. It is a free game- they can make as many accounts as they like.

The hardware will become widely available once kernel-level anticheat becomes widely used.

>if the anticheat detects the hardware being used.

The only thing the anticheat will be able to detect is ordinary hardware. My cheating device will capture input from HDMI or PCI, the software sees it as a graphics card or a display. My cheating device lets me inspect memory directly, the motherboard just sees a normal stick of RAM. My cheating device lets me bhop and aimbot- the OS just sees an ordinary USB keyboard and mouse

[drdaeman]

Regarding the hardware detection - there's always way to up the game and make the system totally airgapped.

It is not impossible to have mechanical actuators pressing keys and moving a mouse, and a webcam watching a real monitor. While that's an awful lot of work compared to just reading data off a bus and simulating a HUD device, consider that some decades ago (when the fight was entirely about API hooking and ReadProcessMemory) DMA snooping was considered merely an unrealistic, theoretical possibility.

[maccard]

> The player is not banned. The player's account is banned. It is a free game- they can make as many accounts as they like.

You're right and my wording was sloppy. Often account bans come with "hardware" bans which are an attempt at stopping this from happening but like any other form of anticheat they're not 100% effective (and nor do they need to be to be worth having).

> The hardware will become widely available once kernel-level anticheat becomes widely used.

Sure, and then the barrier for entry has been raised to buying the correct hardware, having it and keeping it up to date.

> The only thing the anticheat will be able to detect is ordinary hardware.

That's a very bold claim. There's no reason to assume that the hardware will match exactly - I expect that as the cheaters pick devices to spoof the cheat detectors will look for (and find) discrepancies.

[smileybarry]

Games have been using fake memory addresses to catch cheats for decades, there’s no reason to assume games won’t try and find memory inspectors by having multiple stores of value and catching the one being processed or modified.

[blibble]

> The hardware isn't banned, the player is banned if the anticheat detects the hardware being used.

how? it can report itself as any pci device

[maccard]

The cheat software can report itself as any software, so that is the secret sauce. Can't say I'm privy to how exactly that is. The difference between "reports itself as X" and "reports itself as Y" are the same problem space.

[blibble]

the software actually has to interface with the operating system, which is how it's detected

the PCI card doesn't

it can be a regular perfectly functioning NIC with a different ROM chip

[pilgrimfff]

That's why I have to qualify it with ultimately

Right now, the analog option is out of reach except to those with the right skills. But the hardware isn't that expensive even now, and will only get cheaper. All it takes is someone to commodify it.

[josephcsible]

> Right now, the analog option is out of reach except to those with the right skills.

What skills? Buying something online, then plugging it in once it shows up on your doorstep?

[drdaeman]

I don't think there are any commercial-grade hardware gaming aids on the market right now. If we don't count gaming keyboards and mouses with macro functionality (some folks consider those "cheats")

All the devices I've seen were hobbyist DIY proof-of-concept hardware. And if we're talking about real hardware assist (a machine that sees a screen and helps human operator with their inputs), it needs a machine vision trained for a specific game/setup and that's also quite an effort.

[pilgrimfff]

If there are out-of-the-box options now, then yeah, it could be as you describe.

If you're assuming everyone knows how to wire up motors to a microcontroller and get the software set up and calibrated, that's not accurate. If you want to minimize that to a term besides "skills," that's your prerogative.