threeoh6000
@threeoh6000
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sirocyl
@sirocyl

"third party anti-cheat kernel driver" should strike the same kind of fear in you as "debug port left exposed" or "default root telnet password"

there should be no business sense for MS to sign these; they should not be signed, signing them should result in fines and sanctions, and the OS already doesn't load unsigned kernel drivers.

this shit should, honestly, be illegal through and through.


nex3-reposts
@nex3-reposts

(reblogging from this account bc my main is locked at the moment to avoid harassment)

OP is slightly inaccurate: this isn't "EA's Anti-Cheat"

The (potential) bug is actually in Easy Anti-Cheat. It's an easy mistake to make, since the acronym is EAC, but I don't think they're affiliated with EA at all. Their logo is this:

You can see the official list of games that use it here, but it's not exhaustive. This site lists all games. There are some big names on there, like Fortnite and Elden Ring.

Also note that, according to the article above, it's still unknown whether the exploit was actually in the anti-cheat or in Apex Legends specifically, or exactly what level of privilege escalation it attains. Fully reinstalling your OS and changing every password is definitely the safest option, but if the cost of doing so would be onerous for you it may be worth waiting a day or two and seeing how big the blast radius is.


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in reply to @threeoh6000's post:

I mean, anti-cheat is like safes - they're never impossible to unlock by someone unauthorised, it's a matter of making it as hard as possible to do so.
But then, having a titanium safe does not install a backdoor in your damn house. There are no promises that anti-cheat makers could give to make it feel secure (that is, not having a damn hole in kernel level software) - if anyone ever was able to make 100% unexploitable software, anti-cheat wouldn't have to exist.

this tbh. there's all these dingus dongles for thunderbolt, PCIe and even firewire, to poke arbitrary memory over DMA in a way that's almost completely undetectable. a veritable hacker's dozen of 'em

in reply to @sirocyl's post:

crikey is that what I think it is
edit: whatever I thought it was, it's worse than that.
tl;dr: x86 I/O port level access to any unprivileged program. yes that includes superio, vesa, and BIOS, PCI, ISAPNP config space, and so on.

And if you have a Windows computer you may just find you have it installed unexpectedly! Lots of stuff bundles it because they're too lazy to write a proper driver for the narrow case they want.

Huh? "Keep intrusive bullshit off my computer" is like, the one thing gamer-ass-gamers are typically on the right side of. Sure they'll still play the games anyway, but when it comes to steam reviews and reddit posts gamer spaces are generally hostile to this stuff almost to a fault

Only the people playing the games that already have it, people playing other games see any sign of cheating and start begging for more invasive anticheat thinking it will actually fix things (it doesn’t, though).