[HN Gopher] Rainbow Six Siege hacked as players get billions of ...
___________________________________________________________________
Rainbow Six Siege hacked as players get billions of credits and
random bans
Author : erhuve
Score : 272 points
Date : 2025-12-27 19:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.shanethegamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.shanethegamer.com)
| dvh wrote:
| It's not random bans, the nicknames are words from longer text.
| It's lyrics from Shaggy - It wasn't me.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Global game messages being used to meme - reminds me of Team
| Fortress 2 rings.
| Levitz wrote:
| Saw a video earlier today with the lyrics of Billie Jean by
| Michael Jackson too.
| purkka wrote:
| Per the tweet linked in the article there were _also_ random
| bans in addition to the ban feed shitposting.
|
| https://x.com/KingGeorge/status/2004902566434668686
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Copy of tweet:
|
| >@KingGeorge
|
| >Seems like R6 is completely fucked. It's unreal how bad.
|
| >Hackers have done the following.
|
| >1. Banned + unbanned thousands of people.
|
| >2. Taken over the ban feed can put anything.
|
| >3. Gave everyone 2 billion credits + renown.
|
| >4. Gave everyone every skin including dev skins.
|
| >5:09 AM * Dec 27, 2025
| vogtb wrote:
| The line "How could I forget that I had given her an extra
| key?" comes to mind. Maybe someone left an API key laying
| around somewhere? Although I could be giving the hackers too
| much credit...
| super256 wrote:
| Maybe the mongo db exploit from two days ago?
|
| https://github.com/joe-desimone/mongobleed
|
| https://beta.shodan.io/host/212.104.194.153
| mrklol wrote:
| Somebody else said some Postgres dumps are available, not
| sure if they are even using mongo. But maybe mongo was the
| start of the chain.
| croes wrote:
| Seems so
|
| https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2005008887234048091
| nhinck3 wrote:
| lol leakier than a sieve.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Copy of post:
|
| >@vxunderground
|
| >Clarification post, previous post about Ubisoft lead to
| some confusion. That's my fault. I'll be more verbose. I
| was trying to compress the information into 1 singular
| post without it exceeding the word limit.
|
| >Here's the word on the internet streets:
|
| >- THE FIRST GROUP of individuals exploited a Rainbow 6
| Siege service allowing them ban players, modify
| inventory, etc. These individuals did not touch user data
| (unsure if they even could). They gifted roughly
| $339,960,000,000,000 worth of in-game currency to
| players. Ubisoft will perform a roll back to undo the
| damages. They're probably annoyed. I cannot go into full
| details at this time how it was achieved.
|
| >- A SECOND GROUP of individuals, unrelated to the FIRST
| GROUP of individuals, exploited a MongoDB instance from
| Ubisoft, using MongoBleed, which allowed them (in some
| capacity) to pivot to an internal Git repository. They
| exfiltrated a large portion of Ubisoft's internal source
| code. They assert it is data from the 90's - present,
| including software development kits, multiplayer
| services, etc. I have medium to high confidence this
| true. I've confirmed this with multiple parties.
|
| >- A THIRD GROUP of individuals claim to have compromised
| Ubisoft and exfiltrated user data by exploiting MongoDB
| via MongoBleed. This group is trying to extort Ubisoft.
| They have a name for their extortion group and are active
| on Telegram. However, I have been unable to determine the
| validity of their claims.
|
| >- A FOURTH GROUP of individuals assert the SECOND group
| of individuals are LYING and state the SECOND GROUP has
| had access to the Ubisoft internal source code for
| awhile. However, they state the SECOND GROUP is trying to
| hide behind the FIRST GROUP to masquerade as them and
| give them a reason to leak the source code in totality.
| The FIRST GROUP and FOURTH GROUP is frustrated by this
|
| >Will the SECOND GROUP leak the source code? Is the
| SECOND GROUP telling the truth? Did the SECOND GROUP lie
| and have access to Ubisoft code this whole time? Was it
| MongoBleed? Will the FIRST GROUP get pinned for this? Who
| is this mysterious THIRD GROUP? Is this group related to
| any of the other groups?
|
| >Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z
|
| >12:12 PM * Dec 27, 2025
| squigz wrote:
| If they do, would this be the first time source code from
| a major game publisher has been leaked?
| esseph wrote:
| Not remotely.
|
| Why would you think that?
|
| Witcher 3 / Cyberpunk 2077 / Gwent / GTA 5&6 / FIFA 21 /
| Watch Dogs: Legion / etc.
| dplgk wrote:
| Sweet, can we open source Rainbox 6 Raven Shield?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2005008887234048091
|
| Here's the word on the internet streets:
|
| - THE FIRST GROUP of individuals exploited a Rainbow 6 Siege
| service allowing them ban players, modify inventory, etc. These
| individuals did not touch user data (unsure if they even could).
| They gifted roughly $339,960,000,000,000 worth of in-game
| currency to players. Ubisoft will perform a roll back to undo the
| damages. They're probably annoyed. I cannot go into full details
| at this time how it was achieved.
|
| - A SECOND GROUP of individuals, unrelated to the FIRST GROUP of
| individuals, exploited a MongoDB instance from Ubisoft, using
| MongoBleed, which allowed them (in some capacity) to pivot to an
| internal Git repository. They exfiltrated a large portion of
| Ubisoft's internal source code. They assert it is data from the
| 90's - present, including software development kits, multiplayer
| services, etc. I have medium to high confidence this true. I've
| confirmed this with multiple parties.
|
| - A THIRD GROUP of individuals claim to have compromised Ubisoft
| and exfiltrated user data by exploiting MongoDB via MongoBleed.
| This group is trying to extort Ubisoft. They have a name for
| their extortion group and are active on Telegram. However, I have
| been unable to determine the validity of their claims.
|
| - A FOURTH GROUP of individuals assert the SECOND group of
| individuals are LYING and state the SECOND GROUP has had access
| to the Ubisoft internal source code for awhile. However, they
| state the SECOND GROUP is trying to hide behind the FIRST GROUP
| to masquerade as them and give them a reason to leak the source
| code in totality. The FIRST GROUP and FOURTH GROUP is frustrated
| by this
|
| Will the SECOND GROUP leak the source code? Is the SECOND GROUP
| telling the truth? Did the SECOND GROUP lie and have access to
| Ubisoft code this whole time? Was it MongoBleed? Will the FIRST
| GROUP get pinned for this? Who is this mysterious THIRD GROUP? Is
| this group related to any of the other groups?
| Group_B wrote:
| Can't help but laugh a bit. Not a great day for Ubisoft.
| Hopefully this didn't ruin the holidays for too many employees.
| That would absolutely suck to get a call in for this.
| adzm wrote:
| > Will the SECOND GROUP leak the source code? Is the SECOND
| GROUP telling the truth? Did the SECOND GROUP lie and have
| access to Ubisoft code this whole time? Was it MongoBleed? Will
| the FIRST GROUP get pinned for this? Who is this mysterious
| THIRD GROUP? Is this group related to any of the other groups?
|
| Find out in the next episode of... Tales from Cyberspace!
| pjc50 wrote:
| This has the air of a parody spy caper where the various people
| who have broken in keep tripping over each other.
|
| The source leak is really interesting, though. We don't often
| get to see game source, and it often has surprises in.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Will the SECOND GROUP leak the source code? Is the SECOND
| GROUP telling the truth? Did the SECOND GROUP lie and have
| access to Ubisoft code this whole time? Was it MongoBleed?
| Will the FIRST GROUP get pinned for this? Who is this
| mysterious THIRD GROUP? Is this group related to any of the
| other groups?
|
| This read to me like the end of a soap opera. Tune in
| tomorrow to find out!
| azalemeth wrote:
| Nothing highlights how pointless e-sports items are more than a
| real dollar value for a player base of all of them. The entire
| global GDP is as an order of magnitude roughly $100 trillion.
| So this $340 trillion figure is 3.4 times planetary total
| economic output - meaning the theoretical value of Rainbow Six
| cosmetics exceeds what the entire human civilisation produces
| in a year. Multiple times over. You'd be valuing pixelated gun
| attachments higher than annual agricultural output across all
| nations, all manufacturing, all services, everything.
|
| I bet it appears unchallenged at some point in a court (or
| insurance) document though.
| andersa wrote:
| You could achieve a similar sum by adding balances out of
| thin air to random bank accounts, which is comparable to what
| happened here.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| While I understand what you're saying, it's pretty clear what
| is meant is "$X worth at the price they currently sell for".
| When there's a story about an object in space made of gold
| worth 100s of trillians of dollars, nobody believes it would
| really sell for that much if we captured it and mined all the
| gold; because the value of gold would plummet based purely on
| it's existence.
|
| But I agree with you that it would be put into a court
| document as "it cost us this much" for the full amount, vs
| the amount they were likely to ever be able to sell (and
| can't, now that everyone got it for free, so the value is $0)
| chii wrote:
| and yet, most people use this same measure for market
| capitalization of companies.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| The market cap is unambiguous, a more correct estimate of
| "how much to buy all the shares?" is situational and
| would just distract from getting the point across.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Not really. If a company were to manufacture a
| substantially large number of shares out of nothing (no
| additional investment money or other value entering the
| company) then the market cap would not go up. It would
| stay the same and per-share value would go down.
|
| The market is mostly reasonable about who can and will
| sell their shares. If a big mover does sell a lot of
| their shares at once, the price will fall. Most big
| holders will slowly sell off shares for this reason.
|
| In the other direction, it's also understood that the
| cost to acquire all shares of a company is more than the
| market cap of a company. This is why you see acquisition
| prices being significantly higher than the last funding
| round valuation, or public shares popping on announcement
| of an acquisition attempt.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The valuation is based on them hypothetically selling the
| same quantities that the hackers gave away at their retail
| prices, which of course no one believes they would ever
| actually sell that much.
| bombcar wrote:
| At least it's webscale.
| dijit wrote:
| I used to work for Ubisoft, though not on Siege- I have met and
| had detailed conversations with their lead architect though;
| truthfully I remember little of those conversations.
|
| Regarding the second group and access to source code; this is
| unlikely for a combination of four reasons.
|
| 1) The internal Ubisoft network is split between "player stuff"
| (ONBE) and developer stuff.
|
| 2) The ONBE network is deny by default, no movement is possible
| unless its explicitly requested ahead of time, by developers,
| in a formal request that must be limited in scope.
|
| 3) ONBE to "developer network" connections are _almost never_
| granted. We had _one_ exception to this on the Division, and it
| was only because we could prove that getting code execution on
| the host that made connections would require a long chain of
| exploits. Of course that machine did not have complete access
| to all of the git repos.
|
| 4) Not a lot of stuff really uses git internally. Operations
| staff and web developers prefer git strongly; so they use Git.
| But nearly every project uses Perforce. Good look getting a
| flow granted from ONBE to a perforce server. That will never
| happen.
|
| Siege, like The Division, worked against Ubisoft internal IT
| policies to make the product even possible. (IT was punishingly
| rigid) but some contracts were unviolatable.
|
| The last I heard, Siege had headed to AWS and had free dominion
| in their tenant, but it would need Ubiservices (also in AWS)
| and those would route through ONBE.
|
| I'm not sure if much changed, since a member of the board is
| former Microsoft and has mandated a switch to Azure from the
| top... But I am certain that these policies would likely be the
| last to go.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I wonder how many times former Microsoft people demanding
| switches to MS infrastructure are still actually working for
| Microsoft.
| dijit wrote:
| I mean, I worked for Nokia in 2011..
|
| .. you don't have to tell me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that was a particularly dirty episode. I wrote about
| it when it happened.
|
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/microsoft-just-bought-nokia-
| for-...
|
| I think I got one prediction wrong but the rest stuck.
| sznio wrote:
| Four attackers present in a system at the same time?
|
| How?
| sureglymop wrote:
| Misconfigured database that was publicly accessible,
| vulnerability/exploit dropped around the same time.
| fainpul wrote:
| > Players across PC and console are being urged by the
| community to stay offline, as reports continue to surface of
| accounts receiving billions of in game credits, rare and
| developer only skins, and experiencing random bans.
|
| Regardless if this is true or not, and how it works exactly, I
| find it an interesting scenario.
|
| For players: should I go online to maybe get gifted tons of
| ingame valuables while risking a ban? It turns playing into a
| gamble.
|
| If I take on the hackers' view, I would find it exciting to
| dish out rewards and punishment at random on a large scale.
| The_President wrote:
| The attackers better hope they fully hid their tracks - this is
| a bold hack, and such an level of overt cybercriminality with
| financial damages will result in a decade in prison if caught.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| It's a shame this game has to pander to eSports fanatics
| rendering it into a completely hollowed out soulless experience.
| From the early days of Operation Chimera to selling half of your
| stake and IPs to Tencent, Ubisoft has seen it all.
| reactordev wrote:
| Ubisoft kept making garbage and sacrificed their IP's for the
| sake of keeping the company alive...
|
| It was doomed.
| Insanity wrote:
| +1. Can't believe how they held amazing IPs and then milked
| them to death while lowering the quality game over game.
| Whether it's far cry or assassin's creed, all the later
| iterations are worse than the series start.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I'm still bitter at them for canceling XDefiant... it
| wasn't a COD killer but it filled a comfortable niche and
| had potential.
| Insanity wrote:
| Oh wow, they cancelled it? I played it for a bit on
| release. Kinda fun, didn't stick with it, but surprised
| it's already cancelled so short after release.
| reactordev wrote:
| >"too far away from reaching the results required to
| enable further significant investment"
|
| That's the statement they said when they shut it down.
| Ubisoft only had one goal all of 2010s, to turn item shop
| marketplace micro transactions into their primary
| business. They failed. They failed because they forgot
| why they existed. So let's all make them remember.
| newsclues wrote:
| This game was amazing at launch, recently tried it again and
| it's become trash
| bob1029 wrote:
| > It's a shame this game has to pander to eSports fanatics
| rendering it into a completely hollowed out soulless
| experience.
|
| There have been many victims of the eSports neuroticism. League
| of Legends is probably the most extreme example I can come up
| with. You will eventually get _banned from the game_ if you
| choose the "wrong" play style. You don't even have to cheat or
| play poorly. Overwatch suffered a very similar fate - They
| removed a player slot to force it to fit the "5 man" meta. In
| the case of OW, the changes proved so unpopular they had to
| literally delete the original title from everyone's PC to force
| use of the only remaining option.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Not much good happens where people are treating video games
| like a hobby or even job. Last time I played that type of
| game was csgo in college, never again.
| lysace wrote:
| A 9 year old random FPS game.
|
| WTF happened to non-shooter games? I am so bored of these FPS
| variations.
| dmbche wrote:
| Maybe check out game awards finalists
| lysace wrote:
| I checked them out. I guess I just miss a time when Falcon
| 3.0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunt_Island sold
| really well.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| We've come a long way in the past 30 years
| lysace wrote:
| Yeah, 1000 variations later, the latest Doom/Quake
| iteration looks great.
| manytimesaway wrote:
| Summing up the entire FPS genre as Doom-like is unfair
| and discredits you more than anything else. Heck, even
| Doom and Quake are wildly different.
|
| FPS haven't been under the spotlights for a while, these
| days it's mostly MOBAs.
| dmbche wrote:
| I do like Dusk (and most New Blood releases) if that's
| what you mean
| bigyabai wrote:
| Ultrakill is better than every DOOM campaign combined.
| happosai wrote:
| Miss falcon 3.0? Go with Falcon BMS. For any genre of games
| there is a modern remake and community these days.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I literally discovered a completely free and open source
| Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander remake last month
| which is great for nostalgia's sake.
|
| https://www.beyondallreason.info/
| xioxox wrote:
| Stunt Island was pretty good. However, there are more
| unusual games out there with reasonable budgets, like Death
| Stranding, The Talos Principle, The Outer Wilds, Portal and
| X4:Foundations. Even games involving shooting like Control
| or Alan Wake 2 are driven by unusual story telling.
| Akronymus wrote:
| IMO the vidya gaem awards [0] are far superior to the game
| awards.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXMcq_LJ8ro
| waffleiron wrote:
| Maybe you can give a bit of context why you feel that way?
| Dropping a 2+ hour, <2000 views, 4chan video without
| context isn't really the type of comment HN is looking for
| as far as I can tell
| navigate8310 wrote:
| https://vidyagaemawards.com/previous-years
| tyre wrote:
| Play Hades 2!
| comrh wrote:
| We're currently in a golden age of Indie games catering to
| hyper specific niches. Ignore all AAA games and you'll find
| absolute gems.
| bavell wrote:
| Some very fun indie games I've been playing this past year
| (lots of early access):
|
| - Hexarchy / Rogue hex (Civ-like)
|
| - The Last Caretaker
|
| - Captain of Industry (factorio-like, was posted here on HN by
| dev awhile back)
|
| - 9 kings
|
| - Super Fantasy Kingdom
|
| - Manor Lords
|
| - Astronomics
|
| - Heart of the Machine
| lysace wrote:
| Those games have 100x to 500x smaller budgets than the AAA-
| games. Yes, they often have cute ideas, but, like a
| blockbuster movie, 99 times out of 100 you need a solid
| budget to make a solid movie/game.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Wikipedia has a list of the most expensive video games to
| develop, with a lower limit of $50mil. https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...
|
| The top of the list is Genshin Impact, although it'll
| probably be displaced by GTA6 soon - that one's estimated
| to come in at $1.5-2 million. There's multiple FPS games on
| there but there's some pretty expensive open-world games
| too.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > $1.5-2 million
|
| You mean billion?
| egypturnash wrote:
| yeah, sorry :)
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| I love that E.T. from 1982 stays on the list because of
| inflation. Adds some perspective.
| handoflixue wrote:
| > 99 times out of 100 you need a solid budget to make a
| solid movie/game.
|
| Sure, but 1 in 100 still gets you dozens of games a year
| now. There's plenty of genres where the top titles are
| nowhere near an AAA budget: Hades 2, Silksong, and Claire
| Obscura all being popular examples from this year, and
| Factorio being another well known example around here. Even
| simpler games like Balatro and Vampire Survivor are plenty
| of fun for some people.
|
| The biggest studios have rarely been the ones producing the
| best work - budget gets you fancy cinematics and a
| beautifully rendered 3D world, but it doesn't make level
| design go any faster. It could plausibly buy better
| writing, but that requires all the executives to back off
| and trust the creatives.
|
| And for what it's worth, the big studios are all happy
| raking in money on mindless remakes - it keeps working for
| them.
| reyqn wrote:
| I would argue clair obscur is actually a shooter game
| seeing the variety of op builds
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| If you want AAA games, you are going to have a safe game.
| You get the same with movies - Bigger budgets cause safer
| behavior with less risk taking. You wind up with a pretty
| game, a somewhat safe story (that they think will sell) and
| gameplay they think is just good enough to keep you going.
|
| It isn't that the other games are bad, though. It isn't
| like we are talking "handheld camcorder student-written
| movie" vs "polished hollywood blockbuster" but more....
| Beautiful painting by a mostly unknown artist vs beautiful
| large, publically displayed and privatly funded artist. Big
| budgets get you more assistance and more/better tools and
| more space and more human help and more connections.
|
| It is probably important to remember that a large portion
| of a blockbuster's budget is advertising. Advertising is
| often 50-100% of the production budget and I'm guessing AAA
| games have similar advertising budgets. I'm not sure how a
| large advertising budget gives you better products, though
| it might get you more folks if your game is online.
|
| Of course, I'm guessing if you limit your search to FPS
| games, your experience might be a different.
| Fargren wrote:
| If 1% of indie games are solid, and all AAA game are solid,
| and there are 100 times more indie games than AAA games,
| then there would still be the same amount of solid indies
| as there are solid AAA games. As it is, I think for every
| good AAA game, there are somewhere between 50 and 500 great
| indie games.
|
| Finding them is slightly harder, but absolutely worth it.
|
| In any case, complaining about how many games there are out
| there that are not your thing is a waste of time. Much
| better to define what you like and look for recommendations
| from people who like similar games. Who care how many FPSs
| are released if you don't like FPSs? If you like RPGs, find
| RPG gamers and ask them what's good. Substitute for any
| genre; there is no genre out there that's not getting more
| releases than you could possibly play.
| bavell wrote:
| I've played the above games at least 100x more than I've
| played any AAA titles this year :)
| malka1986 wrote:
| Hopefully, AAA games era is coming to an end.
| phantasmish wrote:
| This is like complaining all modern movies are superhero
| movies. It's hard to think that unless you're hardly looking at
| all, or have fairly narrow taste and aren't counting most of
| the medium.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I play non FPS video games almost every night. There are so
| many great games available.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Yes. I tend to lean to MMOs, ARPGs, and survival/building
| games.
| 476392647282 wrote:
| > Prominent Siege creator KingGeorge
|
| So, the lead developer?
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Streamer[1,2], formerly pro gamer[3]. "Creator" here is a
| clipping of "content creator", an overtly ad-industry term that
| makes me a little sad(der) each time I hear it but is
| unfortunately universal nowadays, especially for people making
| videos (as we don't really have another umbrella word for
| that).
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsHlla-bq0C_2OtEy8s2_Sg
|
| [2] https://www.twitch.tv/kinggeorge
|
| [3] https://liquipedia.net/rainbowsix/KingGeorge
| leetbulb wrote:
| "Prominent" being sub 1000 views on YouTube?
| nixgeek wrote:
| A million subscribers on Twitch?
| leetbulb wrote:
| Fair. Didn't check Twitch.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I wonder if they could push out an update. That would be super
| scary.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That depends, they might just fix some bugs and call it a day.
| There would have to be a trial of the pyx for sure to figure
| out what got changed and by who.
| afdbcreid wrote:
| I think GP is saying that if the _attackers_ can push an
| update it will be scary.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, I got that.
| petterroea wrote:
| Hard to have sympathy for Ubisoft the company as they are
| regularly used as an example of the most anti-consumer practices
| out there. But the whole situation is a mess, and if anything, it
| is probably the consumers that will end up suffering the most for
| this.
| pjmlp wrote:
| This is why security actually matters in game development.
| miohtama wrote:
| It is Mongo
|
| https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2005008887234048091?s=20
| butz wrote:
| Nice to see anti-cheats working and protecting Linux players from
| hacks, by preventing them from actually playing the game.
| sylware wrote:
| "kernel anti-cheat" is actually a re-branding of "anti-(non
| steamdeck)-linux" software, probably to please msft (since sole
| beneficiary). We all know they are inefficient and weaponized
| by hackers.
|
| You know on linux there is a feature for a process to snoop
| into another process, that for the same user (non root), can be
| use for anti-tampering: with a proper "security" team, as all
| live-service games should have, you can give hell to hackers
| without a kernel module...
| firtoz wrote:
| How trivial is it to pretend to be a steam deck?
| jdubs1984 wrote:
| In what context? To show up at work and convince everyone
| you're a steam deck?
|
| Thats probably pretty difficult.
| westmeal wrote:
| Easy enough with the right costume and plenty of
| confidence.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Kernel anti cheat in the client are the strongest form of
| protection by far, your comment makes no sense, anything
| userspace is easily spoofed. You can create a driver ( module
| ) that intercept calls and that is completely invisible to
| userspace processes.
|
| The default security measures on Linux are pretty bad
| compared to windows, it's not even close. People like to bash
| windows but they have a way better security model.
| sylware wrote:
| 1 - kernel module from anti-cheats are weaponized by
| hackers.
|
| 2 - if I recall properly, that linux feature is a direct
| mapping of the target user process allowing extreme
| dynamicity in time, performant, and much more powerfull
| mechanisms than basic 'calls'. Namely hell for hackers if a
| live service game has a proper "security" team, all that
| without a kernel module.
| dijit wrote:
| What are you even talking about?
|
| The parent is right.
|
| I'm quite literally the first person to bash Windows for
| being a shitty operating system, but the requirement for
| signed modules puts a massive barrier to entry for
| cheaters, where Linux can load just about anything.
|
| If every system call can lie to you, there's a few things
| you can do, but it's not many.
|
| I know this because I've actually done a lot of due
| diligence on anti-cheat.
|
| One mechanism I attempted to employ was to replay
| initalisation vectors and determinism of inputs; this
| means I could replay your session out of band and witness
| the same outcomes. If there was variation then there's a
| fault. Except as soon as you introduce floating point
| numbers there's no more determinism... Oh well.
|
| The other was to watch for "impossible" things, but then
| you need to run full complex physics simulations for
| every client. If your game requires you to effectively
| buy an i7-11700k for every user then you'd have to sell
| your game for a lot more money, _and_ limit how long they
| can play - nobody wants this.
|
| The third option was to score our best players and anyone
| who performs better than that gets their behaviour
| tracked. The problem is, coming up with a scoring system
| that's server side is much harder than you think.
|
| GameDevs don't actually like paying a shit load of money
| for anti-cheat (that also breaks their debugging systems
| and causes bugs: a wonderful combination)... so if you've
| got a better way: join the industry and fix it. You'll be
| a moderately wealthy person.
| sylware wrote:
| What are you talking about?
|
| 1 - kernel anti-cheats ARE weaponized by hackers. This is
| not a matter of discussion unless you are into the AI
| generated HN news conspiracy.
|
| 2 - this linux feature should provide (if I recall
| properly) a very complex and flexible (not limited to
| "calls"), and performant, set of interactions between a
| set of anti-cheat processes and the set of game
| processes. All that as being non-root priviledge (I think
| you must be have the same effective user id). The actual
| and real parameter is the level of competence and
| creativity of the "anti-cheat" team which is a
| requirement of any "live-service games" with frequent
| updates.
|
| 3 - for FPS games where aiming skill is critical, anti-
| cheat are close to useless due to "external" AI based aim
| assist hardware.
| Thaxll wrote:
| 1. They're not, not sure where you've seen that, not in
| western games at least.
| esseph wrote:
| > "The researchers investigated the techniques used in
| online game cheating, as well as those deployed by 'anti-
| cheat' technologies. Most modern anti-cheat engines run
| in the Windows kernel, alongside applications such as
| anti-virus, at the highest levels of privilege. Software
| can only run in the Windows kernel if it has been
| approved and signed by Microsoft. This makes it more
| powerful than software run normally by the user. An
| example of kernel level software is the Crowdstrike
| system that recently failed, bringing down large parts of
| the internet."
|
| > "While the anti-cheats are allowed in the kernel by
| Microsoft, the study also revealed that cheat software
| commonly uses weaknesses in Windows protections to
| 'inject' itself into the kernel and gain higher
| privileges. Many techniques mirror what is commonly seen
| in the domains of malware and anti-virus, with a
| difference in motivation."
|
| > "This kernel injection technique has previously been
| observed in advanced ransomware attacks to disable anti-
| malware protections before the main attack."
|
| https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1061994
| transcriptase wrote:
| I've seen so many cases of cheaters online where even the
| most braindead of checks would neuter most cheats:
|
| Are they moving faster than conceivably possible by a
| real player? Even the most basic (x2-x1)/t > twice the
| theoretical will catch people teleporting or speed
| hacking.
|
| Is their KDR or any other performance metric outside 5
| standard deviations from the mean?
|
| Here's one: is everyone they encounter reporting them for
| cheating along with one of the above? Do people leave
| their matches constantly?
|
| Defining and detecting objectively impossible things is
| not impossible.
| dijit wrote:
| Yeah, we do those things.
|
| 1) they're not foolproof
|
| 2) there is a delay in aggregating the data
|
| this has annoying effects when the game has a trial
| period/goes on sale/has lots of cheap CD keys floating
| around.
|
| 3) if you weren't delayed then the cheaters get better at
| adjusting to how you catch them.
|
| We actually do a lot of statistical analysis, but it
| works in tandem with endpoint anti-cheat, and would
| hardly work at all alone.
| brightball wrote:
| I know when I spent a lot of time dealing with fraud in a
| different market, the most effective tool was to catch
| and shadowban the accounts rather than banning them.
|
| If we banned them, they just created a new account and
| kept doing the same things.
|
| When we detected them and the isolated them from all
| other good standing accounts, only allowing them to
| interact with other shadowbanned users, it virtually
| solved the problem. Normal users went about their day and
| the cheaters/fraudsters wasted a lot of time never
| getting through to anyone.
|
| In gaming it seems like creating a cheaters purgatory
| where they are stuck competing against other cheaters
| forever would probably end up being its own special
| league after a while. Like when people suggested steroids
| in pro-baseball should be legal.
| dijit wrote:
| Yeah, we actually discussed doing something like that.
|
| That's what GTA5 did (though, they marked you with a
| dunce cap)...
|
| .. even though it's a good idea (and we nearly
| implemented it actually), there's probably a reason that
| GTA5 is _still_ plagued with cheaters.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Scoring ect ... is kind of useless because it's not a
| proof, basically it means nothing tangible to be able to
| ban with 100% confidence. That's why ML is not good for
| detecting cheaters.
|
| It gives a score that is hard to use.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Are they moving faster than conceivably possible by a
| real player? Even the most basic (x2-x1) /t > twice the
| theoretical will catch people teleporting or speed
| hacking._
|
| This is how I imagine Amazon ended up banning a large
| amount of players for speedhacking. The players were
| lagging. I'm guessing their anti-lag features ended up
| moving them faster than the anti-cheat expected.
|
| But I agree that a combination approach would probably
| work.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > GameDevs don't actually like paying a shit load of
| money for anti-cheat (that also breaks their debugging
| systems and causes bugs: a wonderful combination)... so
| if you've got a better way: join the industry and fix it.
| You'll be a moderately wealthy person.
|
| I got a better way... just look at the past. Back in ye
| goode olde UT2004 times, there was no random matchmaking
| / ranking bullshit that removed the social element, game
| licenses cost money, people ran their own servers, and if
| you pissed off server mods enough, no matter if you were
| a cheater, a suspected cheater, or just an asshole, your
| serial got banned - sometimes, across a fleet of servers
| that shared ban lists. Cheating had _costs_ associated.
|
| But of course, that means you can't lure in whales with
| free to play games and loot them via microtransactions
| any more...
| dijit wrote:
| Thats a cynical take.
|
| The truth is that UT2004 sold 234,451 units over its life
| according to Wikipedia.
|
| The Division sold over 10,000,000 copies in the first
| weekend.
|
| The requirements change drastically when you have a
| larger audience.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Thats a cynical take.
|
| Primarily driven by my utter disgust for modern
| monetization mechanics, corporate greed and gambling.
| Cheaters, IMHO, are an inevitable side effect of
| combining gamification with gambling, with no barriers to
| entry, and with removing social barriers of entry.
|
| > The requirements change drastically when you have a
| larger audience.
|
| The market has exploded in the 12 years between UT2004
| and The Division.
| dijit wrote:
| > The market has exploded in the 12 years between UT2004
| and The Division.
|
| Yes, and you can't assert that it didn't happen at least
| in part due to efforts to make games more accessible.
|
| You couldn't release a game like UT2004 today with the
| same UX and expect competitive sales. Even if you did,
| the experience would scale very poorly.
| mjr00 wrote:
| I played Warcraft 3 competitively in the "goode olde"
| times. Ladder was full to bursting with maphackers. It
| was still the way most people played, even though it also
| fully supported custom lobbies/rooms, which were used
| plenty for DotA, but almost never for random 1v1 matches.
| It sucked.
|
| You _don 't_ have a better way. You have a nostalgic
| memory of how games should be played which doesn't match
| what people in a modern audience expect. It's like saying
| the solution to cell phones tracking you is to use a
| landline, because that's how we used to do things.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| This ignores that community servers basically invented
| client anticheats. Almost all the current 3rd party
| anticheats started for community servers. Even Quake 3
| Arena was updated with Punkbuster at some point.
|
| You still see this with modern day servers. Modded GTA V,
| FiveM, had additional anticheat even before the unmodded
| game added anticheat. Part of the appeal of CS2 servers,
| Face-IT and ESEA, is the additional anticheats.
| esseph wrote:
| If companies have the ability to control the binaries
| that run on your PC, and prevent you from running the
| ones you want, you're cooked.
| well_ackshually wrote:
| Man, even "Area 51 has aliens" is a better and more backed up
| conspiracy theory than this. Kernel AC isn't to please MS,
| nor is it to shit on Linux/Steam Deck. They don't matter.
| They're inexistent. They're a blip of very vocal users that
| keep believing that Proton is going to save them from EA
| making shit games.
|
| KACs exist because they want to have higher privileges to not
| be injected into, closed or otherwise touched by any other
| process. That's also why a bunch of them have started to ask
| for Secure Boot, so that they can guarantee at least some
| chain of trust that ensures you've probably not tampered with
| your machine.
|
| Your Linux example 1/ turns anti cheats into not only
| something that analyzes what runs on your machine, but
| actively tries to attack it, which is the textbook definition
| of malware, but also a gigantic liability should you happen
| to say, write into word.exe because you fucked up and thought
| it was a cheat. 2/ turns it into an infinite game of chasing
| each others with you injecting into cheats, cheats injecting
| into you, back and forth. In addition, you're running on an
| actively hostile machine with a hostile user that _wants_ to
| fuck over your anti cheat.
|
| Please do some proper research on the subject.
| sylware wrote:
| A user level anti-tampering software (and more with such
| linux feature) is not a kernel module which is weaponized
| by hackers.
| not_a9 wrote:
| > We all know they are inefficient and weaponized by hackers.
|
| Name an exploit in EAC/BattlEye/Vanguard/FaceIT/whatever
| other big name anticheat middleware (though Vanguard and
| FaceIT don't sell their services I think) that has actually
| been used for anything.
|
| Genshin Impact's driver got used as a vulnerable driver that
| one time, yeah. EAC had an exploit to inject your own code
| into processes, but that quickly got patched
| (https://blog.back.engineering/10/08/2021/).
| Aerroon wrote:
| ESEA's anticheat was used to mine Bitcoin on the players'
| computers. They are/were a major competitor of FaceIt. They
| supposedly had to pay a $1 million settlement over it.
|
| So not an exploit, but even worse.
| cedws wrote:
| Games using Easy AntiCheat can opt in to Linux support. Arc
| Raiders runs on Linux (but not in VMs) whereas Fortnite does
| not, because Epic has chosen not to support Linux. Ironic given
| Tim Sweeney's supposed anti-monopoly stance.
| bhargav wrote:
| > Ironic given Tim Sweeney's supposed anti-monopoly stance.
|
| This doesn't really make sense. If you are implying he is FOR
| monopoly, he would want the game on every possible platform
| right? He loses money by not having more players playing his
| game.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| The person you replied to obviously referred to the Windows
| monopoly.
| Zambyte wrote:
| That's why it's ironic. Maybe you're missing the context of
| the iOS App Store case, which is why he is supposedly anti
| monopoly.
| brookst wrote:
| Sweeney isn't anti-monopoly, he's pro-Sweeney. He sees an
| opportunity to let others do the work and investment to build
| platforms, then selectively swoop in to compete once the risk
| and investment pay off.
|
| It's not a bad business model if he can get the courts on his
| side: let others spend billions and take risks, then cherry
| pick the successful platforms and compete with their
| distribution using a cost basis that doesn't have those up-
| front costs and risks.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> He sees an opportunity to let others do the work and
| investment to build platforms, then selectively swoop in to
| compete once the risk and investment pay off._
|
| Sure. Just as long as you agree Google and Apple let others
| do the work and investment to develop new games, apps and
| media, then swoop in and demand a cut if the risk and
| investment pay off.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| They don't automatically take a cut, they only take a cut
| when you want to sell to their captive audience, on their
| hardware, using their distribution system.
|
| Wait until you hear about how the entire entertainment
| industry has always worked!
| michaelt wrote:
| _Their_ hardware, huh?
|
| You're right, customers don't really _own_ an iphone,
| even if they 've paid $1000 for it.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _He sees an opportunity to let others do the work and
| investment to build platforms^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H apps, then
| selectively swoop in to compete once the risk and
| investment pay off._
|
| If that's not a flawless description of a walled-garden app
| store, I can't imagine what would be.
| not_a9 wrote:
| > because Epic has chosen not to support Linux
|
| Because Epic doesn't want payhack configs to be advertised in
| whatever leaderboards Fortnite has, like CS2 had for a while.
| cedws wrote:
| Fortnite is easy to run in a hypervisor and also cheaters
| are using hardware DMA to cheat these days anyway. The
| proposition that Linux enables more cheating relative to
| Windows is unproven.
| reactordev wrote:
| Tim Sweeney is anti other-people's-monopoly. He's happy to
| support his own.
| Thaxll wrote:
| This hack has nothing to do with client cheats.
| Aurornis wrote:
| These changes are occurring in a server backend database.
| They're not client side cheats.
|
| The people receiving the credits aren't even the ones
| initiating the changes.
|
| Also many anti-cheat packages do have Linux versions. The
| primary reason you're not getting ports for Linux is because
| companies don't want to do the port and support all versions of
| Linux clients they would encounter in the very tiny number of
| additional installs.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Proton is a single build target, and it's just the Windows
| build target.
| reactordev wrote:
| Exactly, this argument wasn't a good one 10 years ago and
| it definitely isn't one now.
| tpxl wrote:
| Valve maintains a 'Steam Runtime', which is similar to a
| docker container, to ensure it's easy to develop games that
| run on many distributions.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem is kernel level cheats, can't defend against
| those from pure userland.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Soon: The problem is DMA level cheats, can't defend
| against those from the kernel.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| Oh those are already here, Its why Battlefield needs
| Secureboot turned on so it can use the IOMMU to protect
| the game kinda
| runtimepanic wrote:
| This is the nightmare scenario for live-service games: once the
| integrity of progression and bans is compromised, trust
| evaporates fast. Rolling back "billions of credits" is easy
| compared to undoing random bans.
| Surac wrote:
| Ubislop, Ubislop never changes. Never trust a Ubislop
| prmoustache wrote:
| "That wording has been met with heavy backlash from players, many
| of whom believe Ubisoft is attempting to downplay the severity of
| the situation."
|
| Come on it is just a game (*_*)
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Rainbowhood
| mlacks wrote:
| It appears to be from the mongo db exploit. Sort of like
| Heartbleed from a few years ago.
|
| https://github.com/joe-desimone/mongobleed
|
| https://beta.shodan.io/host/212.104.194.153
| MattDaEskimo wrote:
| My heart goes out to the devs forced to return to work to solve
| these issues. Numerous groups claiming numerous exploits - mostly
| MongoBleed.
|
| One has to wonder: why didn't anyone anticipate this happening?
| Surely the moment this exploit was discovered the team would've
| locked it down immediately?
| rldjbpin wrote:
| poured way too many hours into this game long back before it
| became too painful to play. this almost made me go back and check
| on the madness but unfortunately the servers are taken offline.
|
| while i don't agree with how devs and the publisher works on
| community feedback, it is still miles better than what EA does.
| not that it is a high bar to clear.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I remember when gta5 was getting hacked left and right when it
| was released. People would just hand you millions in in game
| currency and you'd get to unlock all the hypercars and military
| vehicles. Really made the game fun removing the grind and pay to
| win and allowing everyone to do anything. And it gave people a
| chance if someone was dominating a lobby with something broken or
| overpowered to actually fight back fire with fire.
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