Online Game Security - Quake III and its Hacks -

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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

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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, Whats Now?
• Possible Solutions

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What is Game Hacks (or cheats)?

• A program that alters a games performance
• Enhancing the abilities of the hacker (or
  cheater)
• Giving an unfair edge over the other players

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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

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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 games memory in runtime

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How do Hacks Work?

• Hard Coded
• Modify the game code directly and permanently
• Easily to be blocked

Game Server
Game Program
DATA
Hack
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How do Hacks Work?

• External
• Reside outside the game program
• Limited functionality

Game Server
Game Program
Hack
Windows Graphic Display Interface
DATA
Color Model
Windows Mouse Control
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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
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How do Hacks Work?

• Client Hook
• The most advanced and popular today
• Inject code into the games memory in runtime
• Alter and control the game directly in runtime

Game Server
Client Hook
Game Running
DATA
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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

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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

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Full transparency
Partial transparency
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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

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Colored object model
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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

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ESP showing Enemies name, weapon and their
locations
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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

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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

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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

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So, Whats 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

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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

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THE END