What do you mean by this? As the user you are intending to have the game and its anticheat run. Having to download and run a game on your computer isn't compromising your computer either. Maybe the only thing which doesn't give the game company power to run potentially malicious code on your machine is cloud gaming. That also solves the cheating problem at least.
> If they can be installed along with the games under a gaming only account on the Linux machine, that is, with zero permissions on system and other users files around, that's fine with me.
Completely ineffective. It will be trivial to circumvent those protections. Might as well not bother.
The truth is cheaters are merely excersising their computing freedom. It's my computer, the game is merely running on it. If I want to read the game's memory and adjust aim or automate boring parts, it's my prerogative.
In order to prevent any of this, the game company must take over my machine. They must literally own my computer. Anti-cheating software is virtually indistinguishable from malware and there is no situation where this is acceptable. The game company's "needs" are irrelevant.
Many games come with an anti-cheat software indistinguishable from rootkits. Some EULAs state that any data from your machine is subject to exfiltration for analysis including dumps of raw memory in order to prevent cheats. Some anti-cheat software also supports true arbitrary RCE past the inherent RCE of automatic updates.
While those powers are probably used in good faith by those companies, it is also a potential vector for an attacker to compromise a gamer's PC. I'd be way more worried about an anti-cheat company being compromised than an obscure open source game.
I don't see how this is related. I'm installing a game with anti cheat software on my computer to improve my experience. This is my choice, my hardware, and is for my own benefit.
> So, now you are also forced to install these spyware-like sidecars to the game that monitor you and try to figure out if you are doing any of this?
I'm pretty sure the anti-cheat is just a library/module/etc. that's installed with the game. I can't imagine that it's a completely separate program that you install (unless it happens to be the game launcher).
>That won't work against ML bots that take video input which is increasingly going to be a problem.
You are getting into the territory of botting or letting other people play on your account than regular cheeting like what is described in this article.
>or otherwise uses my hardware against me
Proving the current state of your system isn't using your hardware against you. It is showing that your system is secure against cheats.
>Neither will I accept opaque anti-cheat kernel modules
If they aren't opaque they will be instantly bypassed
>I don't want anything to do with malicious anti-user software.
Cheats are antiuser software that can kill an entire game. Software that combats this threat is prouser.
> With windows I don't think this will be technically feasible.
It's not only feasible but it's basically reality.
Anti-cheat systems for online games can literally ban you if they detect that you run a blacklisted program in the background or use a modified graphics driver. And you won't even know why you were banned, and lose access to all games you bought with that account.
> That's totally ok if the anticheat admins are providing a computer to run the software on and not attacking one the player owns. Again "almost everyone else does it" doesn't make it ok, I don't know why people keep repeating that.
What do you mean by this? You realize almost every competitive ranked game right now has a kernel driver constantly running and monitoring in the background while you play right? Anti-cheats serve a purpose to detect cheats, just like an anti-virus serves a purpose to detect viruses.
You seem oblivious to the fact that there is no extra security risk from a client sided scan versus (like with Echo) having a client side anti cheat running while you play (like every game). What point are you trying to make?
You keep saying it's a terrible idea but haven't said what's wrong with it...
It doesn't copy tons of data out the machine through ring0 and it doesn't expose anyone to anything whatsoever, its almost all on machine and the same goes for most anti-cheats.
I don't get your point, if you don't want the anti-cheat on your machine then don't install and play the game, it's that simple. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
The games I play don't have these sort of anti-cheat features; the anti-cheat is handled entirely on the server side. A server admin who is attentive and ready to rollback griefs helps a lot too. But kernel-mode anticheat on the players' computers is not "very much required."
(The game I play most is minecraft, and I think it's more popular than any of the games with this sort of invasive anticheat.)
No it doesn't. The attack does not require you to install a compromised game like 0xDEFC0DE was suggesting in the other thread. Obviously if you install a compromised game then no other attack is necessary.
I'm choosing to install anti-cheat software into MY OS, on MY hardware, to improve MY gaming experience. The OS isn't subverting anything by allowing me to do that. I can't see how that's anything like your hypothetical. The anti-cheat software isn't being rolled into Windows for everyone in the globe, it's part of a voluntary, user-directed game installation on a specific computer.
And your games are spying on you. Many of these games employ invasive anti-cheat systems which shake down your computer and send a bunch of data to their servers. This shit doesn't fly with distro packages.
Which games do you play that require anti-cheat schemes?
The last time I checked, many such games explicitly do not support running in VMs and you risk being banned by obfuscating that you are running the game in a guest OS.
What do you mean by this? As the user you are intending to have the game and its anticheat run. Having to download and run a game on your computer isn't compromising your computer either. Maybe the only thing which doesn't give the game company power to run potentially malicious code on your machine is cloud gaming. That also solves the cheating problem at least.
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