Curse

EternalTempest · Oct 04, 2007, 05:20 PM // 17:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Very good point. One thing you should know: all the people (including me I realise) talk about these system in the present tense, while they should mention these systems won't be here before 3 or 4 years. Until then, people will continue to be scammed and credit card databases will continue to be stolen.

This thread reminds me of the one on the /report feature. The only vocal people are the ones complaining, and sometimes whining (those that can no longer play nasty and get pleasure from annoying other people). The ones that have no problem with the system don't talk.

Throughout history no matter how many inventions are made to stop unscrupulous people there will be unscrupulously that find away around it easily.
I never see a day / age / tech that security if fool proof.

Agree, the people that vocal only reperesent a very small portion of the player base.

Glider of chaos · Oct 04, 2007, 05:21 PM // 17:21

IMO this article is next to useless.
The thing is that any good for anything game with multiplayer just doesn't trust clientside programs on anything of any importance. Every decision is made serverside, clientside is just a way to show the graphics and get input commands...
And tbh I don't think that hardware keylogger will be imossible to hack.

So... bottom line: IMO intel is just trying to extend their "feature list" with cool stuff like "totaly uber anti-hacker tool" and get an additional PR on the way.

Tijger · Oct 04, 2007, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coridan

I read about this earlier today as well...sounds interesting....but i think it is a long ways off yet.

Actually no, its not, the article is stack of nonsense pretty much but the hardware does exist and is readily available.

The hardware in question is Intel's vPro processor which is already in production and can soon be ordered as a standard option with any Dell business PC. To clarify, all Dell business PC's will have the chip but there is a small price tag for enabling it.

Its primary function is not to stop cheating in games ofcourse but provided that the game maker includes the necessary code in their games it could well be used for that.

If you want more info I suggest looking here:

http://www.intel.com/business/vpro/

lyra_song · Oct 04, 2007, 06:03 PM // 18:03

i like the little comment from the Maplestory guys....

considering they dont stop hackers and botters since they pay the most ^_^

Brett Kuntz · Oct 04, 2007, 07:05 PM // 19:05

If anyone thinks this will stop the stealing of media or hacking of software..

..lol

Omega X · Oct 04, 2007, 10:25 PM // 22:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by EternalTempest

Throughout history no matter how many inventions are made to stop unscrupulous people there will be unscrupulously that find away around it easily.
I never see a day / age / tech that security if fool proof.

I agree. Just look at DRM and these weak encryption schemes by media conglomerates. That crap gets cracked daily.

Recon_Alpha · Oct 04, 2007, 11:59 PM // 23:59

You know who I blame for hackers/cheaters? Developers of the game industry! They are the ones that introduced cheating by writing it into their code (up, up, down, up up, A, A, B, B = GOD MODE, UNLIMITED $$, etc). Had they developed the game the way it should have been played, not added any cheating mechanism, perhaps online hacking/cheating wouldn’t be so bad. Had they not given people “an easy way through” the game, they would have learned to play without needing cheats.

The bad thing is, they still add the code to their game and then throw up their arms when people cheat in online games.

Cheating/hacking is bad, doesn’t matter if it’s single player or multiplayer.

Str0b0 · Oct 05, 2007, 03:18 AM // 03:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

The way they will prevent that is called a "chain of trust": the TPM is a tamper-resistant hardware (open it and it will clear all its content); the BIOS uses it to store a hash of the boot loader, which i then started and in turns hashes the boot loader, and so on until the particular OS, libraries and the game (probably in a virtualised compartment, but this is a bit off-topic) run. And these last components will not enable you any kind of reverse engineering (the API will be restricted to what the game needs) or have any unrelated features (you run your game in one "compartment" and the rest in another, the two compartment use separate memory spaces that can't be read from the other compartment). Plus you'll use some of the crypto that the TPM provides to hide the communication with the server (you can't see the keys inside the TPM unless you hack the OS which will not be permitted in these scenarios).

This is NOT, to my knowledge, the way they plan to implement it. Just one possible scenario.

Even if it was implemented in that way all it would take is a PC without the hardware and a PC with the hardware and a packet analyzer. Presumably the anti cheat must report server side in order to be effective. So a packet analyzer would let you see the the information being sent server side by the anti cheat by means of a simple comparison. Once you have figured out the info that the server is receiving you could alter the packets sent to the server to basically tell it that everything is OK and that any odd input is the result of the player as opposed to a cheat program. You wouldn't even have to necessarily know the crypto used you just have to be able to duplicate the information that the anti cheat would send regardless of the context. Now if the crypto covers all the information in the packets and not just the data from the hardware that would make it slightly more difficult to crack but still not impossible.

Granted this would likely cause increased lag times which may give away a cheat program but it would be difficult to prove that it wasn't just a latency issue in the first place. Likely it would make the anti-cheat freak out too and it would be screaming that something is wrong but it would be unable to communicate that to the server because all it's packets would be altered. The only real recourse they would have is to make the chip so that it shuts down the game itself or the entire OS if a cheat is detected and I doubt that any computer manufacturer is willing to go that far. I know I for one wouldn't buy a computer if it had a chip that could possibly freak out if I decided to say, run video capture program with a game, and then shut down my computer.

Really though as someone who appears to have more than a little knowledge about computers and software you have to admit that hackers are resourceful. I have a biometric scanner, an outward facing firewall, an inward facing firewall, NIDS, and behavioral monitoring software on my computer and did you know I still have people making it past one or more layers of my protections? I catch the alerts on the NIDS but they breeze right past two software firewalls and two hardware firewalls no matter what sort of new behaviors I set into the firewalls themselves. Cheaters will cheat and they will pay money to people who promise them the ability to cheat without consequences. As long as that money is there hackers will continue to provide programs and continue to find exploits regardless of protections put in place.

.

Fril Estelin · Oct 05, 2007, 06:56 AM // 06:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tijger

The hardware in question is Intel's vPro processor which is already in production and can soon be ordered as a standard option with any Dell business PC. To clarify, all Dell business PC's will have the chip but there is a small price tag for enabling it.

Its primary function is not to stop cheating in games ofcourse but provided that the game maker includes the necessary code in their games it could well be used for that.

If you want more info I suggest looking here:

http://www.intel.com/business/vpro/

I talked and attended a presentation by the creator and main engineer of Intel who created TXT and contributed to VT-x (the two main innovations in vPro), David Grawrock, this week and I can tell you that it has NOTHING to do with what's in this article.

TXT will be used for enforcing whitelists of virtual machine monitors (VMM), while VT-x is a hardware accelarator for VMMs. This will mainly be used for server computers, but there are cool side-effects for client PCs (such as running Windows 5 to 10% faster).

You also make the confusion with the TPM (Trusted Platform Module), the chip (though some other forms of it are not HW) that the TCG (Trusted Computing Group, renamed the root of all evil by people like Richard Stallman and Ross Anderson, while Linus Torvalds understood the technology better) created. This is an OPT IN technology, until the moment when the platform owner enables it, the TPM does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

(on the other hand, one quite new information is that the future Intel chipset will include a TPM, not everyone here is happy about this ...)

Fril Estelin · Oct 05, 2007, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Str0b0

Even if it was implemented in that way all it would take is a PC without the hardware and a PC with the hardware and a packet analyzer.

Very easy: the chain of trust starts at the TPM (which stores securely the hash values of SW started up to the game, I forgot to tell you that!). If there's no TPM, the game does not start, because the OS does not start, because the OS loader does not start, because the boot loader does not start, because it does not get the TPM signals (faking this signal on the LPC bus would require a valid endorsment key, knowledge of the LPC bus and hardware to fake this complex, though slow, signal ... this would cost a lot of money only to run a game!).

Quote:

Presumably the anti cheat must report server side in order to be effective. So a packet analyzer would let you see the the information being sent server side by the anti cheat by means of a simple comparison.

Nope, it does not need to contact the server if it's programmed smartly. The only communication with server would be firmware update, which can't be broken due to the crypto behind it (and by that I mean breaking RSA for 2048-bits keys ... which would earn you huge amount of money, see http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2216 for more info). Bear in mind, most stuff that get out of the TPM is useless, unless you know the keys inside the TPM (which would require huge resources to break, and even then it only gives you keys for this particular platform, each TPM has a different endorsment key).

Quote:

Once you have figured out the info that the server is receiving you could alter the packets sent to the server to basically tell it that everything is OK and that any odd input is the result of the player as opposed to a cheat program.

Just a quick note: this is what the GWLP project did (and the "hacker" did an excellent job btw) but it does not apply here, since you would be (this is purely hypothetical, as I said before they will probably not implement it this way) on an OS stripped of all its decompilation features.

Quote:

Granted this would likely cause increased lag times which may give away a cheat program but it would be difficult to prove that it wasn't just a latency issue in the first place.

Good point, timing will be an issue. I suspect they will actually build it into the client (once more, when a VMM runs the particular OS that the game is expecting, you can't fake on the SW side, you have to hack the hardware, which is much more expensive and difficult and so in the cost-benefit analysis, this could deter hackers).

Quote:

The only real recourse they would have is to make the chip so that it shuts down the game itself or the entire OS if a cheat is detected and I doubt that any computer manufacturer is willing to go that far. I know I for one wouldn't buy a computer if it had a chip that could possibly freak out if I decided to say, run video capture program with a game, and then shut down my computer.

The plan, as far as I know, wouldn't be to shut it down at all, you either are able to start the virtual machine (VM) with the game inside (thus it's virtually not modifiable), or you're not (but you're able to start other VMs to do anything else, but play the game).

Quote:

Really though as someone who appears to have more than a little knowledge about computers and software you have to admit that hackers are resourceful.

You're absolutely right. And when SW attacks, they look at HW, and if not (as rightfully indicated in a previous messge) they attack the human (meaning social engineering, not mugging!). As I said at the very beginning, it's an arm's race. But hackers will face a huge wall with these technologies, which require physical presence in front of the computer to be broken!

Quote:

Cheaters will cheat and they will pay money to people who promise them the ability to cheat without consequences. As long as that money is there hackers will continue to provide programs and continue to find exploits regardless of protections put in place.

In my opinion, the next big wave of attacks are automated social engineering, which will take the information from you by using knowledge of your behavior, surroundings, etc. (such as reading my message on this forum, and possibly others, and then exploiting this in-game). And I think that at one point, there is the possibility that the world will split into different "stratas", almost as in the "have" and "have nots", the former being able to play and do certain things, while the latter will not. I'm waiting to see what lawyers will do, since they are already moving on DRM (and I do think it's not right btw).

Aside note: on the topic of DRM, actually this is theoretically a desirable property that is called "integrity". And funnily, people perfectly accept it on mobile phones (technically, the SIM belongs to you, but not the phone, whose SW is totally under the mobile operator's control), but they don't accept it on their PC. I believe that now that people discovered the "free world" (Linux, which is totally legitimate btw, then lead, in a complicated manner, peer-to-peer content to fight the abusive prices set by major companies, but even when price go down people still download content), they do not want to go back, even if it is for their security. I also believe that ultimately the problem is not HW or SW, it's human: politics, law, fair economic models.

Coridan · Oct 05, 2007, 11:36 AM // 11:36

Fril Estelin my new hero....i think you have explained what is going on very well....thanks

Divinitys Creature · Oct 05, 2007, 02:40 PM // 14:40

You all need to watch this FYI
http://www.lafkon.net/tc/