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Comment on Why is anti-cheat always client-side?

xep@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I just want to say that the term 'rootkit' has been twisted out of shape when referring to anti-cheat. Rootkits are malicious. Software using low level privileges that require the user's consent to a EULA, and which is designed to be uninstallable by the user I would not consider a rootkit, just invasive.

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ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Root kit by definition means software that grants root privileges to whoever controls it. Anti-cheat, especially kernel level anti-cheat, does just that. Parts of the anti-cheat used for genshin impact has been used on entirely different computers to disable antivirus programs.

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- IHeartBadCode@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Root kit by definition means software that grants root privileges to whoever controls it
  
  That doesn't sound correct. That would mean sudo is a root kit, and I would be hard pressed to find people who agree with that statement.
  
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  - r00ty@kbin.life ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I think it's very important to separate root and kernel mode. If you run an application as root, you are still running in user mode. Drivers and other kernel modules are running in kernel mode. There are a lot of differences with serious implications for system stability and security.
    
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- xep@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I don't call sudo a rootkit, do you?
  
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  - ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Should’ve clarified that it’s other users that are being granted elevated access, not the user sitting in front of the computer. Also, sudo doesn’t grant access, you must already have access to use sudo.
    
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r00ty@kbin.life ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Yes, I mean I understand why people use the term rootkit. But, at the same time it isn't good to dilute a term for something malicious.

At the same time, while I hate cheating in online games I barely trust game developers that are often on a crunch timeline, access to user mode on my system. I really don't want to give them access to kernel mode just to detect cheats. Also, it just means the next level of cheats just has to do the same, or get themselves in the hypervisor instead or hardware based anyway.

I don't play games that have kernel mode anti cheat (unless they've somehow installed kernel mode drivers without me knowing, every game installer wants admin to install these days it seems) for this reason.

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