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Comment by rudedogg | Hacker News Reader

gameref looks like a really clever and simple solution as a hardware device.

> After some research and a few POCs I am 100% certain a ML solution will not work in detecting cheats other than completely trivial "spinbots" or "aim-lock" aimbots.

I'm curious why you say this. I'm a machine learning noob, but it seems pretty straightforward that it would work. Relating to wallhacks, they can use your last 1,000 matches, and if you're never/rarely surprised by a camping enemy, you're probably cheating. Your camera position moments before interaction with an obscured enemy is probably another indicator.

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I'm failing to see a use case for gameref. At the big tournaments the computer is provided by the organizer. For online tournaments, wallhacks and maphacks won't be detected by this device.

> I'm curious why you say this. I'm a machine learning noob, but it seems pretty straightforward that it would work. Relating to wallhacks, they can use your last say 1,000 matches, and if you're never/rarely surprised by a camping enemy, you're probably cheating.

Exactly. And not just that, wouldn't ML in theory also be able to detect subtle reactions to changes that the player shouldn't see? For example if a cheater has a map hack that only shows dots on the minimap, and does some small action like twitch with the mouse when an enemy he's following and can't see or hear ingame, changes direction?

> I'm failing to see a use case for gameref. At the big tournaments the computer is provided by the organizer. For online tournaments, wallhacks and maphacks won't be detected by this device.

There have been cases of people smuggling aimbots in onboard mice drivers. There was also a Steam oversight where hacks could be loaded via the workshop feature. A semi-pro German player was caught in 2015 I believe.

There has never been a proven case of either as far as I know, only theories and "insiders" claiming these things.

The german guy who was caught was saying a lot of these things which obviously weren't true, like claiming that a lot of other players in top teams were cheating on LAN, but in hindsight that hardly seems believable.

A driver cheat which would auto-inject code on insertion would as far as I know require a 0-day exploit on Windows, and I have a hard time believing one of the cheat devs was sitting on one of those.

> The german guy who was caught was saying a lot of these things which obviously weren't true, like claiming that a lot of other players in top teams were cheating on LAN, but in hindsight that hardly seems believable.

I mean, there were 3 pro players banned in like a week. I doubt this was coincidence [1].

> A driver cheat which would auto-inject code on insertion would as far as I know require a 0-day exploit on Windows, and I have a hard time believing one of the cheat makers was sitting on one of those

It's not completely out of the question. Check out this DEF CON hack which illustrates something similar[2].

[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/csgo-competitive-scene-embroiled-in-...

[2] https://theoutline.com/post/2032/how-to-hack-a-mouse-to-win-...

About [2], yeah, that's the way it could happen without a 0-day, but it really does seem very, very impractical, risky and unlikely.

Out of sf, KQLY and Emilio, it does seem likely that both sf and Emilio would cheat online in order to qualify, but KQLY whose team almost always passed online qualifiers? I have no idea.

If I recall correctly, Emilio was banned months prior to the others though, and he hardly played any major LANs. sf and KQLY were using the same cheat, but there's nothing which makes it seem like it happened on LANs.

Either way, it's impossible to say what happened years ago, but if it did happen, I doubt it kept happening.

> A driver cheat which would auto-inject code on insertion would as far as I know require a 0-day exploit on Windows, and I have a hard time believing one of the cheat devs was sitting on one of those.

Nowadays there's definitely a market for it. eSports is turning in to a multi-billion dollar industry.

0day's can be cheap enough for the type of people willing to risk five figures on CSGO betting, etc.

There was a huge scandal in CSGO a few years ago where people started thinking a top professional player had been cheating in a major LAN, and that was about when he came up with the gameref. The player was banned for cheating, but whether that was on LAN or in online games is still unknown.

The cheat was allegedly injected into the game through an exploit in a custom map which you could download through steam.

> I'm curious why you say this.

Well the answer is surprisingly simple. Suppose you only have one person that's wallhacking on your team. He's calling out positions for everyone else. He can play terribly, but since the calls are going out, your team still wins. (This is not a hypothetical and has actually happened in high level matches before.)

How high level can a team get in CS (in terms of national or world rankings) without playing in a controlled environment where this sort of cheating would be more easily detected by local human observers?

Could my team be ranked in the top ten in the US or Korea or wherever if we only ever play via the internet?

> How high level can a team get in CS (in terms of national or world rankings) without playing in a controlled environment where this sort of cheating would be more easily detected by local human observers?

Very high. You can see for yourself here[1]. Anecdotally, I had a player on my team that cheated in an (online) semi-final match. We had no idea, but were moved down a league, were disgraced, and obviously cut him. A year later, he was one of the people that toured the country with the XFX team. I couldn't believe it. Every one knew this guy cheated just a few months prior, now he was offered a contract. I was very active in the Socal LAN scene, and know at least 3-4 players that played professionally and cheated.

As far as your second point is concerned, some aimbots are so tricky, even local human observers couldn't catch them. I saw this proof of concept made by a famous cheat maker where the mouse would "tug" at the direcction of the player through a wall. The movie would be almost imperceptible by a spectator, but definitely "felt" by the player.

[1] https://www.hltv.org/blog/13538/cheating-on-professional-lev...

> Relating to wallhacks, they can use your last 1,000 matches, and if you're never/rarely surprised by a camping enemy, you're probably cheating. Your camera position moments before interaction with an obscured enemy is probably another indicator.

Do you actually play CS:GO proficiently? Because it doesn't sound like you do.

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