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Gabe Newell Responds: Yes, We're Looking For Cheaters Via DNS
dotarray writes "Valve has stepped up to answer allegations that the company's anti-cheat system was scanning users' internet history. Rather than a simple, sanitized press release or a refusal to comment on 'rumours and innuendo,' Valve CEO and gaming hero Gabe Newell has personally responded."
Newell or not, not everyone will like the answer. The short version is that Yes, Valve is scanning DNS caches, with a two-tiered approach intended to find cheating users by looking for cheat servers in their histories. Says Newell: "Less than a tenth of one percent of clients triggered this second check, accessing the DNS cache. 570 cheaters are being banned due to DNS searches."
The biggest part of his announcement is that this checking is done client side; your DNS history is not sent to Valve. They also only record MD5 hashes that match the cheat sites they are looking for, not your entire DNS history. Finally, they claim to only check for DNS lookups of servers used by the cheat software itself, not just websites where you might read about and download cheats (although in some cases I imagine these could be the same), and use this as a second check after the client has already detected a cheat installed on you machine. So simply visiting cheat software websites without using them shouldn't get you banned.
The app is comparing DNS records with a client-side database of cheat sites, and if it finds a match sending it to Valve's servers for verification & ban-hammer. It's not sending every site you visit, unless the only sites you visit were via DNS records used by cheat developers.
did you even read his response? They look for indications that the cheat is in play, THEN they check DNS as verification, and send a HASH of the dns name to their servers for comparison. This means they don't even see the actual dns name on their side, they can just check against known hashes of the sites the DRM used for verification. That is why it is two staged. Simple existence of the names in your DNS cache won't trigger the ban hammer.
He specifically says that it doesn't care about what web sites you are visiting, it's the adresses to the cheat DRM servers it looks for, to detect if a cheat has dialed home from that computer. It only checked this if the account was already suspected of using the cheat.
So, in an impressive turn of events, many cheats now include DRM and anti-cheat codes. These phone home to a DRM server that confirms whether or not a cheater has paid to use that particular cheat
Also, he says that since the cheats invented countermeasures to this in just 13 days, they already stopped doing it. The summary is quite misleading. (Not necessarily a big surprise on slashdot...)
It's not an issue of viewing cheating sites; Steam is looking for DNS lookups performed on DRM servers (not the Steam ones). Many cheats are paid-for so, in a cruel twist of fate some might say, they use DRM to check if the cheater has paid for the priviledge of doing so.
gaben himself has said that this tactic only lasted a matter of weeks anyway, until the cheatware started futzing around with the player's DNS cache to avoid these checks.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
From the actual article: 1)This is no longer in operation, it was only running for a couple of weeks in the constant cat-and-mouse game with cheat developers 2)It was targeted at the DNS for DRM servers which cheat authors used to SELL cheats to PAYING customers. The system simply reported if the MD5 hash matched the DNS for the known cheat DRM servers, once the cheat had been detected during gameplay already. The DRM servers were not running a website.
So you can't be good at video game and curious about technologies at the same time?
You can be, actually. As Gabe pointed out, the cheats these days have DRM installed to ensure that users of the cheat are actually paying for it. VAC, if it detects indications of the cheat, checks to see if the DRM's phone-home servers are in your DNS record, then sends back hashes of those servers for verification in Valve's system. It was made pretty clear that merely visiting the site for a cheat to check it out, whether intentional or accidental, would not result in getting flagged for the DNS check, let alone getting banned. Even purchasing the cheat would not get you banned, in and of itself.
Basically, the DNS check only kicks in after you've purchased a cheat and used it in a game, at which point you've crossed the line from mere curiosity into abuse, and even then, they weren't banning people immediately, but rather doing the DNS check for final confirmation of cheating activity. And even then, it's only looking for the phone-home servers, not the web servers, used for those cheats, so people who were merely good players and had looked at the servers for the cheat without ever installing and running it would be perfectly fine.
So...what's your gripe then?
I don't care what it is sending or not sending to Valve. It's still an unnecessary invasion of privacy. In fact, its so easy to circumvent that I have a hard time believing that he is even being honest about why they are looking at the DNS records to begin with. How hard is it to clear my history, browse in Incognito mode, or do all of my cheating on a separate machine or in a VM? Trivial.
It's not your web browser accessing cheat websites, it's your cheat software itself accessing its servers. Clearing your history or browsing in Incognito mode won't do anything. You cannot use a VM, since the cheat software must be run on the same machine as you are running the game (and VAC).
And in fact, it may incorrectly flag me as a potential cheater anyway. I have looked up exploit information for games. I did not look in order to cheat at the game, but because I kept running into people who were not being busted for cheating and I wanted to know how they were exploiting the game. I was looking for a better way to tell when someone was cheating, not to actually cheat myself.
Then it will not flag you as a potential cheater, since you were not running the cheat software to access the DNS entries in question. Further, it would never flag you as a potential anyway. This mechanism is only triggered after some other behavior has already flagged you as a potential cheater. This is a confirmation mechanism.
While the basic idea of a piece of software accessing and reporting this information, at least in Valve's public explanation of what they were doing, it was entirely in good faith.
That's all fine and well and I don't have any problems with that... provided that system is ONLY activated for multi-player games. If I - or anyone else - wants to cheat in a single-player game (even if the game itself has multi-player, but the cheating happens in a single-player campaign) that's my - or their - own business and nobody SHOULD be able to prevent anyone from doing that, let alone BAN based on that.
VAC is only activated in multiplayer games that support it, and usually only on VAC-enabled servers (in fact, you can find servers for many of those games that explicitly permit cheats). Some games only support VAC servers (specifically, some of the CODs), but those are exceptions.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
That would be me choosing to enlist my private sensors in a service that is specific to the use of those sensors.
Except in the case of VAC you did choose to enlist the use of VAC to prevent cheats, specifically, when you connected to a VAC enabled multiplayer server. VAC isn't some generic thing Valve sticks on all Steam games, you know: it's only enabled when you connect to a server that is VAC enabled (which is in every game I've player very clearly marked as such). You don't want VAC poking around on your computer? Don't play on a VAC server.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This is incorrect on a few levels.
1. This isn't beyond curiosity. Just because I read about Hitler and the Holocaust doesn't mean I have more than a passing morbid curiosity in the history.
2. You can be really good AND visit these sites all day. Unless VAC trips on you (and being "really good" never gets you caught, they look for specific actual hacks and vectors, not just some K:D ratio), it will never check your DNS.
3. The DNS entry it's looking for isn't "www.hacks.com", it's looking for the call-home function of the hack itself; because hackers don't pay (imagine that) the hacks themselves need DRM.
You have to be caught by VAC (using a hack) and then you need to have a current call-home function to a known hacking service/program to get tripped up by this. That's why it "only" caught ~500 users, this isn't some massive dragnet to ban anyone who's googled the words "counter strike hack".