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BBC Tells World About The Warden
Anonymous Cowpat writes "The BBC is running a story about the Blizzard title World of Warcraft. Specifically an article about, 'The Warden', Blizzard's highly-invasive anti-cheating software, which some, including The EFF have labelled as spyware. Most of the people around here have probably heard of it by now, but it's interesting to see the story in the mainstream press and (at time of writing) on the front page of the BBC's technology news section, no less." From the article: "The watchdog program, called The Warden by Blizzard, has been known about among players for some time. It makes sure that players are not using cheat software which can, for example, automatically play the game and build up a character's qualities. However, knowledge of it crossed to the mainstream thanks to software engineer Greg Hoglund who disassembled the code of The Warden and watched it in action to get a better idea of what it did."
As other poster said, if you don't like it don't play the game. As well does it compare hashes client side? As long as its sending no information to blizzards server than "He's cheating!!" I really don't see why anyone cares what it sniffs.
of more than one multiplayer online game, I have to say, cheaters playing the same game as you suck. Have you ever played CS with cheaters? Really doesn't make it fun at all. Although I'm not 100% thrilled at HOW they're preventing cheaters, so far, they have proven to be not-that-evil(TM). For now, maybe because I like WoW so much, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
So, you would say it is ok for the Police to come search you house to make sure you have no drugs, stolen goods, kidnapped 3yr olds
The difference is that you have the right to private property, WoW has the right to deny you access to THEIR private property based on their own criteria. If this you feel this criteria is too invasive then, by all means, do not use their software/services.
This is like drug testing, you have the right to choose not to work for an employeer that does drug testing, you do not have the right to change their policy on drug testing.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
People agree to this when they sign up for the service. This is the only method to stop cheating, and thats to be invasive.
The current top anti cheat for medal of honor allied assault is a third party program that makes the warden look like a freaking panzy on what it does.
It checks memory to verify there are no spyware signatures, verifies all files before they run, locks the files, runs its own explorer shell so that a person cant alt tab and run things. The game can only be executed within the context of the anti cheat software, the hardware is checked to make a key that can be bannable even if the person re-installs or reformats.
It locks the memory of itself, and the MOHAA software.
Even at that point it isnt good enough, it also launches two other executables with similar protections built in that check each other to make sure that none of the executables is being shut down or altered by an outside program.
People have to agree with this, because nothing else works, if you slip in one area, they write a cheat to exploit it. You slip in another area you get a cheat in another area. If you dont validate all files, even files with odd extensions, they write a kernal thingy that goes around it.
Cheaters have too many dedicated fucktards trying to ruin the games for everyone else.
When you sign up for World OF WarCraft, or use another type of anti cheat, you are saying that you agree to this kind of thing because you want to participate.
In sports, umpires can watch the players and make sure that they arent cheating, in on-line games the umpires have to get right on the computer. AS LONG as those people only use information required to successfully stop a cheater (IE they arent going in and finding out what programs you have installed in your registry and uploading your outlook e-mail book etc...) then what is their to complain about?
All of the stuff where it scans the URL of web sites, and views peoples MSn etc.. thats all tertiary to what its doing. It is scanning those because it is showing up as open windows processes, there is nothing for the anti cheat program to use to determine that the open windows ARENT cheats, until it checks there names to see if it matches the signature.
I dont think people realize just how clever cheaters can be. One of the cheats turned in for MOHAA involved using a bug with MSN and video drivers for ATI. If a notification was up, you could see through the walls!
Then people wonder at the lengths anti cheat software is beggining to take.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Hoglund noted that the text strings in title bars could easily contain credit card details or social security numbers.
Since when would a site submit a URL in the title? I assume this is for sites which don't have a <TITLE> tag, and just display the URL as the title. Even in that case, any website that submits a document with such information in the GET string is asking for trouble. It would allow it, among other things, to be viewed in the document history etc.
We need to stop jumping every perceived violation. There seems to be a witch-hunt on for privacy/security violators, and often the assumptions of what 'could' create a security risk falls into the realm of pretty silly...
A cheater-robot gets caught because it plays a game better than any human could... right? So then, the real challenge for a human player is to be mistaken for a machine... a kind-of reverse Turing test...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
and there is nothing morally wrong with using them
You agree not to cheat. Then you cheat anyway. What's not immoral about that?
Mr Hoglund noted that the text strings in title bars could easily contain credit card details or social security numbers. ... even though he knows that - in the astonishingly massive world of Windows commercial software, shareware and freeware - there's not a single program out there that does this.
Mr. Hoglund is an idiot.
I have a hard and fast rule -- if I'm not actually paying you any money, I'm not providing you with sufficient information to subsequently bill me.
I absolutely will not provide CC information to use a 'free' trial. I also typically refuse to allow people to take moneys out of my accounts in the future without my interaction. You may send me an invoice. You may not just decide to take what you need.
But, I'm probably being unrealistic. Nobody would ever misuse that, right?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.