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Unveiling Game Hacks: A Comprehensive Analysis

Explore the world of game hacks and cheats in online gaming, understanding how they work, what they can do, and how to combat them effectively. Delve into the mechanisms of different hacks, their impacts, and possible solutions for enhanced game security.

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Unveiling Game Hacks: A Comprehensive Analysis

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  1. Online Game Security- Quake III and its Hacks - (related paper: A Systematic Classification of Cheating in Online Games, Jeff Yanand and Brian Randell. Submitted 2004) Speaker: S. F. Yeung

  2. Flow of this Presentation • What is Game Hacks? • How do Hacks Work? • What can Hacks Do? • How to Fight Against Them? • How Hackers Fight back ? • So, What’s Now? • Possible Solutions

  3. What is Game Hacks (or cheats)? • A program that alters a game’s performance • Enhancing the abilities of the hacker (or cheater) • Giving an unfair edge over the other players

  4. What Hacks can/cannot Do ? • Hacks can • Reveal hidden information on the client side • Assist your mouse/keyboard control • Enhance your visibility or remove unwanted visual effect • Hack cannot • Reveal information not exist in client side • Alter the rules and logics of the game • Alter the performance of other players

  5. How do Hacks Work? • Hard Coded • Modify the game code • External • Retrieve information from the game indirectly and alter the control of the game indirectly • Driver Hack • Modify the video driver to gain special visual effect • Client Hook • Inject code into the game’s memory in runtime

  6. How do Hacks Work? • Hard Coded • Modify the game code directly and permanently • Easily to be blocked Game Server Game Program DATA Hack

  7. How do Hacks Work? • External • Reside outside the game program • Limited functionality Game Server Game Program Windows Graphic Display Interface Hack DATA Color Model Windows Mouse Control

  8. How do Hacks Work? • Driver Hack • Modify the OpenGL driver so that objects (including walls) become semi-transparent • Difficult and dangerous to install Game Server Game Program Hacked Video Driver Display DATA

  9. How do Hacks Work? • Client Hook • The most advanced and popular today • Inject code into the game’s memory in runtime • Alter and control the game directly in runtime Game Server Client Hook Game Running DATA

  10. What can Hacks Do ? • Wall Hack • See other players through walls • Aimbot (aiming robot) • Lock your crosshair on other players automatically • Firebot (fire robot) • Fire your weapon automatically once your crosshair hover over another player • ESP (extrasensory perception) • Reveal and display hidden information

  11. What can Hacks Do ? • Wall Hack • Driver Hack • Make everything semi-transparent, you can see others through walls, but everything become semi-transparent may not be good somehow • Client Hook • Only show certain objects through walls, very effective

  12. Full transparency Partial transparency

  13. What can Hacks Do ? • Aimbot and Firebot • External • Colored object model • Scan the screen to locate target • Interfere your control via Windows message • Not very intelligent and inaccurate • Client hook • Access the game engine in memory, obtain target position and take over your control directly • Perfect accuracy if low network latency

  14. Colored object model

  15. What can Hacks Do ? • ESP • Client Hook • Radar ESP and Map ESP • Shows the location of enemies • Text ESP • Shows other players’ name, weapon, armor and other variables

  16. ESP showing Enemies’ name, weapon and their locations

  17. How to Fight Against Hacks? • Pure Server Environment • Server will check against all game files, players joining the server must have the same config file, object models, sound files, etc. • Effective against hard-coded hacks and external hacks

  18. How to Fight Against Hacks? • 3rd Party Anti-cheating Software • For example: • PunkBustered (Quake III, RTCW) • UT Pure (Unreal Tournament) • VAC (Counter Strike) • Players must install the anti-cheating software in order to join a anti-cheating enabled server • Acts like a virus scanner • Auto updates with the new hack patterns • Capture and send screenshots regularly • Banns your serial number if any hack found

  19. How Hackers Fight back? • Anti-cheating Software Proof Hacks • Cracks the anti-cheating software binary • Alters the behavior of the anti-cheating software • Automatically disable the hacks each time the anti-cheating software takes a screen shot

  20. So, What’s Now? • An update competition • Most hacks will be banned several days after public release • Major hacks will have new version few weeks after the previous one get banned

  21. Possible Solutions • Use secure network protocol • Add checksum between every packets, makes insertion or modification of packets difficult • Encrypt all important variables • Encrypt variables so that cheats cannot reveal information from the memory • Push all computation to the server side • The client side only responsible for user input and display rendering thus the cheats have no way to alter the state or outcome of the game

  22. THE END

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