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Epic Games is hiring a Senior Game Security Engineer for their Anti-Cheat team to champion Linux anti-cheat capabilities while working on OS internals, reverse engineering, and protecting multiplayer (lemmy.ml)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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https://www.epicgames.com/site/careers/jobs/6019148004

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[–] 115 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Tim Swiney spent decades being anti-linux until he realized how much of a bitch it is to work with microsoft.

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  • [–] 57 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Same reason GabeN switched.

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  • [–] 44 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Same reason GabeN switched.

    Took him a while, though. Remember that he was originally employed by Microsoft and when he founded Valve and they licensed the Quake 1 engine, among the first things they did was to port the engine to Microsoft Direct3D (luckily they kept the OpenGL renderer because back then Direct3D ran worse).

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  • [–] 39 points 4 months ago*

    GabeN actually used to work for Microsoft, untill he realized more people had DOOM installed on home PCs, than... Windows.

    He helped basically port DOOM to Windows 95 / DirectX, realized you can run games on PCs and there was a market for it, therefore, found Valve.

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    • [–] 112 points 4 months ago

    You’re not getting root access, plain and simple.

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    [–] 177 points 4 months ago* (16 children)

    inb4 it's a kernel module that only works with secureboot and signed kernel images, and kills the game if you have xpadneo loaded.

    Sweeney has been known to manipulate public sentiment (read: impressionable children) to his advantage. Trust nothing until you have the source code.

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  • [+] 26 points 4 months ago (15 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 52 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    We really love saying companies aren't your friend until someone specifies that also applies to companies you're a fan of and think are super cool

    Valve may be much less anti consumer than other companies (and I appreciate their contributions to linux), but they are a company, and what are companies? Not your friend

    They absolutely still have issues, they are not without skeletons in the closet 😅

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Valve is a good company in that they make an enormous amount of money running steam and they use that money to fund generally positive things. That's about as good as you can hope tbh

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    That's pretty much definition of textbook capitalism: they benefit from doing something that benefits others too.

    Too bad this is a rare case in the real world capitalism

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    It's more common than you think, like Apple has done a great job integrating privacy and security features into their OS both because they don't really stand to gain from user data collection the same way Google does, its a good selling point, it helps them protect their app store revenue streams etc. nd also because they actually care about it.

    OTOH they are agreesively anti right to repair

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Can you post us the definition of capitalism please?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals or businesses own capital goods, and the free market controls the production of goods and services.

    Capitalism is a system of economic production

    Private property promotes efficiency by giving the owner of resources an incentive to maximize the value of their property

    A capitalist earns the highest profit by utilizing capital goods, such as machinery and tools, most efficiently while producing the highest-value goods or services.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Both CS and TF2 are rated M.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    This is a stupid argument. First, the ESRB is not the dictator of who plays what games. They are a recommendation group. Parents may want to consider what they say, but it should not be left at that. For example, sexual content is much worse than violent content in their eyes, and I'm sure we all agree that's stupid.

    Second, kids play CS and TF2. We all know this, and Valve knows this. That's not a bad thing, even if they're rated M. I don't think they do any harm, and CS at least probably does some good, with learning teamwork and stuff. Valve then uses their platform to push gambling, which is wrong (it's psychologically manipulative, when they could just sell skins outright without manipulation) regardless of age, but particularly bad if they aren't trying to prevent kids from participating, and they aren't.

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  • [+] -5 points 4 months ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Children should not be near those games. And it's parents job to make sure of it.

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  • [+] -12 points 4 months ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    No, Valve made M-rated games, it's the parents' responsibility to not have kids playing them.
    I know, they're Parents, these unblamable entities, but here we are, sex has consequences.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Secureboot + a signed kernel module should be enough to be certain there's nothing nefarious running in the kernel, and you don't need to go in there to babysit.

    If a userspace app can interfere with a game, a userspace app can detect it.

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    [–] 63 points 4 months ago (28 children)

    I am not excited to have Linux-kernel anti cheat spyware on my machine, but I guess it's good to free gamers from Microslop monopoly.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (26 children)

    I hope we get a commen solution for it. So not every game company needs a Linux kernel module.

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  • [–] 68 points 4 months ago* (23 children)

    I hope we get absolutely no solution for it.

    We don't need kernel level anti-cheat.

    We never have. We never will. We didnt need it on windows, and we dont need it on Linux

    The fact that there are wildly popular games out there, that don't use it, that successfully control cheating to a level that you barely experience/see it, is proof of that.. its not only proof of it, it should be the absolute entropic death of the goddamn topic.

    The only reason to want a kernel level anticheat is so they can poke around in everything you do and send it all home.They get to police their game... They don't get to police and monitor my whole fucking life and everything I do on my computer.

    If I wanted big brother monitoring everything I do and sending it all back home, I'd be using Windows 11.

    Any company that says they need this for their game is lying, and deserves bankruptcy and death.

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  • [–] 28 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    It also doesn't even work. There are so many DMA cheats out there that make kernel AC systems a joke. Meanwhile, Basicallyhomeless built a physical aimbot mousepad that can't be detected because it doesn't even hook into the computer. It moves the mousepad to correct your aim. It's extreme, I know, but the point is that motivated cheaters will always find ways to make AC systems completely useless. Kernel AC has already been defeated, and it's too high of a cost for something that is already defeated.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Yeah, at the physical aimbot mousepad level, the only thing that can detect that would be utilizing something like machine learning techniques for detecting/flagging accounts.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I fail to see how ML would be able to distinguish between that and a really skilled player aiming normally.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    You wouldn't necessarily need machine learning, but you would need some sort of heuristics algorithm that checks a player's inputs to ensure they look like real human inputs. I'm sure the auto-aim mouse pad makes microadjustments or sudden changes that aren't feasible for a human to make, and that sort of stuff is readily detectable.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Not feasible for most humans to make, sure. I just wonder where the line gets drawn between ML and MLG, or even if it's a bright line at all.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    The line is gonna be fuzzy, and based on multiple systems, both automated and manual, and none of it will be perfect. But at the end of the day, it's a fucking video game. I'd rather lose occasionally to a cheater than install malware on my computer.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    until you use machine learning to collect all the game footage of pros mouseflicks so you have data for a "human-like" flicks between any 2 mouse positions, which becomes how your aimbot moves your mouse. Now the aimbot can't catch you without also getting false positives from those pros

    I have always been a believer that the best anti-cheat is a proper way to measure player skill for your SBMM, with that cheaters will naturally only be matched against other cheaters.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Lol you're really underselling how difficult it is to write cheats.

    There's still quite a few ways to detect that kind of thing though, both automatically and manually. At the end of the day, if enough people report the 3 day old account for hitting flicks like Carpe, it's gonna get banned pretty quick. And if a few escape through the cracks, well, like I told the other person, I'd rather lose to a cheater occasionally than install malware on my computer.

    SBMM can be a good solution as well, but I believe that should be a separate, opt-in thing. Matchmade games always tend to lean more competitive/sweaty/sometimes toxic, whereas games without matchmaking are usually more casual-friendly. I think it's nice when games give you the choice.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    The difficulty kind of doesn't matter, because what we want here is recognizing the ceiling of cheat capabilities, and my point is that in this cat and mouse game, in the end when we approach the ceiling, the cheaters will win in the end.

    All because they control their own hardware, they have the final say of what 0s and 1s they send to you in the end.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    It wouldn't be difficult to randomize the bot with a noise filter to vary speed/accuracy and have it aim for center of mass, but slightly off center. Overshooting movement could help evade detection as well. Another tactic would be to let the player do most of the work, but correct it only when they would otherwise miss. Even letting them miss occasionally would throw off scrutiny. There are so many ways to hide it.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I do agree that best solution is that we don’t need it.

    Sadly bassed on what i hear, users are willing do Things on kernel level to cheat. Ie read/Write memory from a different program.

    Youtube: Core dumped: can a gamer company really sabotage your PC? made a good video summarizing the issue.

    I hope that a solution in some sense does not need to send more than som checksums that failed if there is a debug enabled, sign kernel modules that not trusted (ie. self sign), notify the program that hi there is a other program trying read your program’s memory or provided some restrictions memory space that even with debug enable you can’t read that space.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Yes, this is because the average user is dumb and content with guzzling down whatever bullshit gets thrown at them. This is a big part of why we really do not want to see the masses shift to Linux - they'll bring the cooperate interest and the enshitification they love.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    What are those wildly popular games that don't use it?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    counter strike for example... ring0 AC is only available via other matchmaking platforms like faceit

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

    You couldn't have chosen a worse example even if you tried.

    Edit: The downvotes just show how disconnected the userbase here is. I'll bet none of you have touched cs in a decade.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    So you're just going to conveniently forget the giant wave of bans in CS2 a few months back when Valve updated VAC?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    VAC doesnt immediately ban when a cheat is detected, It delays the ban to make it harder for cheat makers to figure out what, when, how, and why it was detected.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    And? It still detects the cheats and bans the users. And it does it without kernel-level anti-cheat.

    The delay isn't a limitation, it's a design decision to prevent reverse engineering, as you've point out. Yet that didn't stop you from falsely alluding that it's not capable

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    • [–] 35 points 4 months ago* (11 children)

    They already have it running and functional. It must still need more work because it's opt-in for developers, and they don't have the confidence to enable it on Fortnite.

    I suspect it's getting attention now because Steam is showing decent numbers on Linux. Way better than when they first shelved the anti-cheat.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (7 children)

    and they don't have the confidence to enable it on Fortnite.

    Tbh, I'm not convinced it's that. I think it's just Tim Swiney not being able to eat crow after bashing Linux for so long, especially after Valve has invested so much into Linux

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    Tim “steam is a monopoly and must be destroyed because of it”

    Also Tim “windows being a monopoly is fine actually and we should do nothing to support alternatives”

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    They are trialing it with Rocket League which they updated to use EAC without dropping linux support.

    I just hope the Linux growth doesn't stagnate due to the insane PC market right now and the potentially DoA steam machine, otherwise alot of this development could go to waste.

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    • [–] 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    You're looking for people passionate about both reverse engineering and also anti-debugging? Okay then.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    That basically means:

    We want someone who is good enough at reverse engineering that they can intentionally design something not reverse engineer-able.

    Think of a code breaker being asked to design an unbreakable code, a lock picker asked to design an uncrackable lock.

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    • [–] 21 points 4 months ago

    Fingers crossed they aren't trying to develop a linux kernel module anticheat because I will never load that crap on anyone's machine.

    Even right now, the last standing proprietary blob in my way is Nvidia, which they finally open sourced their kernel driver so if the userspace blob bothers you, you can switch to the upcoming Nova driver from RedHat.

    The kernel needs to stay clean. They can do whatever they'd like in userspace.

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    [–] 45 points 4 months ago

    Waste of time. Drop the anti-cheat altogether. I do not want it. Do you understand? It doesn't matter what platform it comes on.

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    [–] 14 points 4 months ago*

    If it's epic store I don't want it. If I wanted DRM I already have Steam and it's better.

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