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Critical Vulnerabilities In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, CryEngine 3
hypnosec writes with news that two security consultants have found vulnerabilities in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the CryEngine 3 graphics engine that could harm game makers and players alike. Presenting at the Power of Community (POC2012) security conference, the researchers demonstrated how a denial-of-service attack could affect Modern Warfare 3, and how a server-level attack on CryEngine 3 allowed them to "create a remote shell on a game-player's computer."
"'Once you get access to the server, which is basically the interface with the company, you can get access to all of the information on the players through the server,' Ferrante said. In general, game companies don't seem to be very focused on security but rather on performance of the game itself, Ferrante said. Adding security checks can slow down games, and if the companies don't deem the problem a very critical issue, it will usually be ignored. 'These are games that have a very large market,' Auriemma said."
You believe all the propaganda they pushed to get you to accept DRM. Cheats have always been a natural part of playing games provided the player can control who you can play with. Cheaters could cheat to their hearts content in private games and not effect anyone else. Private servers/LAN allow people to choose who they play with, when and where. These centralized servers create huge security and points of failure.
Not only that but cheating in a single player game you paid for - there's nothing wrong with it because it hurts no one. You are victim of gaming PR and propaganda. You accept broken and inferior products that's not a sign of a healthy mind.
Well yes but THINK about having millions of people playing a SINGLE PLAYER GAME ONLINE, that means huge swaths of computers wouldn't have open ports/be communicating with servers at all if not for 'online drm'. Diablo 3 being a case in point, all these security issues are caused by gaming corporations wanting absolute control over everyone and everything in gaming.
The point is the whole centralization and DRM make security issues much bigger since companies tend to want control and as much information as possible about users and are careless with data. All that could be avoided if the multiplayer aspects of videogames didn't require being chained to online and all sorts of needing accounts, user info and other nonsense.
In Quake 3 you didn't need to sign up anywhere to play the damn game and you never had to give out emails or information to anybody. Not only that requiring users to be online when they play single player just creates a huge attack surface.
Are you kidding? Why patch it.. is a feature, after all the future of modern warfare is cyber warfare! Users are now getting extra content for free,they should be thankful they aren't charged for a DLC pack that they are already using!
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