'Counter-Strike' Gets Invaded By An Unblockable Chat-Bot (kotaku.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "At least one intruder is taking advantage of a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive exploit to flood lobbies (even private ones) with text from chat bots that can't be kicked," writes Engadget. The attack "allegedly comes from one person," according to Kotaku, which reports that "It's a similar exploit to one found a few weeks ago, where typing messages into a lobby allowed users to rank up and down as they chose." The chat bot's text includes various complaints about Counter-Strike which it claims motivated the attack, including cheaters, hackers and "bugs that break the game," and it urges a one-day boycott "to proof [sic] them that we care about the game and want them to fix it."

Comments

Caring

[Calydor]

"I hack and exploit the game because I care about it and want it fixed!"

"I rob banks because I care about them and want them to have better security!"

Re:Caring

[jopsen]

"I hack and exploit the game because I care about it and want it fixed!"

"I rob banks because I care about them and want them to have better security!"

Using an exploit to highlight the exploit and lack of support, is not exactly the same as robbing a bank.

It's more like walking into the bank vault through an unlocked backdoor and then proceeding to call the bank manager to complain about security measures.
(okay, maybe the kid jumped a tiny garden fence before walking over to the backdoor, but it's more like that).

When people demonstrate an exploit their intent matters. Same thing applies when demonstrating a broken lock.

Re:Caring

[Calydor]

So his argument is more like, "I picked the lock on his front door and painted graffiti on all his walls (the spamming) because I care about him and want him to get a better lock on his door!"

Re:Caring

[war4peace]

Improper analogy.
Let me rework it.
"I walked through this overlooked hole in the fence and tapped you on the shoulder while you were sun tanning in your backyard, telling you to fix it".

Re:Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

No permanent harm is being done, so actually it's more like showing the owner of a Master Lock how easy it is to pick.
And in this case, you yourself happen to have a stake in the security of the premises and the owner refuses to replace it, so you just keep picking it until the owner drags his lazy arse out of the couch and replaces the bloody lock.

Re:Caring

[Gussington]

Using an exploit to highlight the exploit and lack of support, is not exactly the same as robbing a bank.

Yes it is. If I figure out that a certain sequence of events gets me into the vault and out again with as much money as I like, then I can choose to notify the bank, or publish it in the interest of customers. Those are the ethical and legal options. I have no right then to rob then bank if because they ignored me. It is still illegal regardless of how cool you think it is.

Re:Caring

[cheesybagel]

Sounds more to me like someone writing "Clean me!" with their finger on the grime of a car windshield or something like that.

Re:Caring

[mwvdlee]

Where's the private gain in his spam?

Re:Caring

[murdocj]

If this is such an obvious exploit, how is it no one walked thru this open hole in the fence the last few years?

And really, at that point you are just arguing over how hard it is. That really doesn't matter. If someone throws a rock thru your window to show you that you have cheap glass, it's not your fault that you didn't have bullet proof glass in place.

Re:Caring

[murdocj]

Sounds a lot more obnoxious than that. More like they took off the tires of the car and piled them in the rear seat because the car was unlocked.

Re:Caring

[war4peace]

If this is such an obvious exploit, how is it no one walked thru this open hole in the fence the last few years?

I guess nobody gave a fuck.
And I never said it was an obvious exploit, the point was damage comparison. he's annoying people, not doing anything dealing long-lasting damage.

Re:Caring

[DontBeAMoran]

Maybe he works for Hormel Foods, LLC.

Re:Caring

[redmid17]

It's not even remotely similar in scope or detail. I can't and won't say it's benign, but you have to be high or a moron to equate a chat bot with armed assault and theft of physical property.

Here's to hoping you smoke a joint before you wrote this post.

Re:Caring

[Calydor]

His amusement.

Re:Caring

[drinkypoo]

I have no right then to rob then bank if because they ignored me. It is still illegal regardless of how cool you think it is.

Yes, that would be illegal. And what he is actually doing is also illegal. He's not taking anything from the bank. What he's doing is equivalent to breaking into the bank vault, which is visible from the bank floor for the purposes of this simile, and shouting at the customers about how shit the bank security is to the point that they can't talk to the tellers and actually conduct any business. It's trespassing, it's harassment, it's denial of service, but it is not theft. This is basically the copyright infringement vs. theft argument all over again. Just like that argument, we know it is different because there are whole bodies of law which apply specifically to what he is actually doing. If everything you didn't like were theft, we would only need laws about theft. That's not how the world works, so please, stop shouting theft.

Re:Caring

[Notabadguy]

Drawing parallels between a bank vault full of money and a counterstrike chat lobby..... ..... ...

That's enough for any sane person to realize the argument is irrelevant.

Re: Caring

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily true. Yes, given a bazooka you could probably just blow a hole in the wall if need be, but it'll attract so much unwanted attention that in practice nobody will do it. What a lock does, or should do, is make it hard to quickly and unobtrusively enter the premises.
Master Locks are purely cosmetic. But there are plenty of good locks out there and they usually aren't even that much more expensive.

Re:Caring

[someone1234]

Ok, maybe he is poking his dick through the fence...

Re:Caring

[war4peace]

And your 'tap on the shoulder' analogy is pretty flawed too. That's assault and likely to result in a physical response.

Not in my country, dear. We're not that fragile around here, to consider a tap on the shoulder as "assault". I mean, seriously, how fucked up IS that?

Bottom line: this guy is being a dick.

I'm not saying he isn't. I'm just saying is not really that big of a deal.

Re:Caring

[Gussington]

It's trespassing, it's harassment, it's denial of service, but it is not theft. This is basically the copyright infringement vs. theft argument all over again.

No it isn't. I said it was illegal, which it is. You brought up the theft thing just now to somehow discredit my argument, but it has nothing to do with me.

Re:Caring

[drinkypoo]

I have no right then to rob then bank if because they ignored me.

It's trespassing, it's harassment, it's denial of service, but it is not theft. This is basically the copyright infringement vs. theft argument all over again.

No it isn't. I said it was illegal, which it is. You brought up the theft thing just now to somehow discredit my argument, but it has nothing to do with me.

What do you think "rob" means?

Re:Caring

[Gussington]

What do you think "rob" means?

What do you think illegal means?

Cheating at Tournaments

[Drakster]

Although I don't play CS:GO, I have heard it has a major cheating problem. The worst part about this is that it doesn't only occur on random online servers, this occurs at major tournaments with prize pools of thousands.

As the hacker mentions, Valve makes some major cash from CS:GO, being one of their most popular games. They should be doing a lot more to prevent it.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Calydor]

No, the worst part about this is that there are professional tournaments with prizes ranging in the thousands and millions for a computer game.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Avarist]

No, the worst part about this is that there are professional tournaments with prizes ranging in the thousands and millions for a computer game.

Someone is stuck in the 20th century. Move along with the times. A hundred years ago people were saying the exact same thing about people playing just a 'game' aka football. There isn't much difference betweeen regular sports, chess, and computer games.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Gussington]

Although I don't play CS:GO, I have heard it has a major cheating problem. The worst part about this is that it doesn't only occur on random online servers, this occurs at major tournaments with prize pools of thousands.

As the hacker mentions, Valve makes some major cash from CS:GO, being one of their most popular games. They should be doing a lot more to prevent it.

So how is this different from say cycling?

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Gussington]

No, the worst part about this is that there are professional tournaments with prizes ranging in the thousands and millions for a computer game.

Games of skill played for cash prizes are a surprise to you? Have you just woken from a coma out of the 19th century?

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Quakeulf]

I must admit I still play the CS:GO regularly.

I have also played with and against cheaters quite regularly and have been told through the in-game menu that players I have played with in previous matches have been permanently banned for cheating and had my match statistics readjusted to reflect that, as it seems matches with cheaters get voided.

It's really annoying, and especially when it gets really evident like when you sneak towards a corner making no sounds and the guy around just knows you are getting close and starts prefiring. This happens way more often than it should, and reporting users seems not to work.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[smallfries]

Valve makes some serious cash from it?

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[smallfries]

Some of those people are cheating - some of them are not. If the spot that you were creeping towards is popular then people will blind fire at it anyway. There many be far more cases when the person blind firing doesn't hit anything - but nobody will see those (unless they happen to be spectating them). The only cases that people see are the rare occasions that it works - and without any way to determine the sample size it looks like clairvoyance (or cheating).

It's the same effect as the stock scam: pick 1024 people and tell 512 that a stock will go up on a day, and the other 512 that it will go down. Drop anyone that gets a false predication and repeat ten times until some sucker thinks that you have a gift for picking stocks.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[mwvdlee]

Yeah, they should go back to million dollar chess tournaments and million dollar ball throwing tournaments.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Mashiki]

So to tournament organizers for cycling, and the bike manufactures, and then there's the clothing folks, and on, and on, and on. Failing to see a problem here, except that some people are stuck in 1973.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[DontBeAMoran]

Have you just woken from a coma out of the 19th century?

I'm actually from the 27th century, but whatever...

Games of skill played for cash prizes are a surprise to you?

What the fuck is "cash"?

Re: Cheating at Tournaments

[Luthair]

Well, in gaming the people giving you money are directly impacted. In cycling the riders are not giving the money rather taking it.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[drinkypoo]

A hundred years ago people were saying the exact same thing about people playing just a 'game' aka football.

Some of us are saying the same thing about it now. It's understandable why this has happened:propaganda works, which is why advertising exists — and professional sports exists as an advertising substrate. Look at who's applying the majority of the money.

There isn't much difference betweeen regular sports, chess, and computer games.

Sure there is. There's loads of differences. Granted, some computer games are just like chess, and some computer games are sort of like sports, albeit only the ones which involve moving your body more than wiggling your thumbs and fingertips. But as a whole, each of these things are very different.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[antdude]

Just like any other non-electronic sports.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[Calydor]

Chess can be played in 500 years same as we play it today. So can football, baseball, any sport you can think of.

How long do you think it will be until CS:GO just can't really run on modern computers, or no one wants to because the graphics are too dated? That is going to be the curse of any kind of e-sports, the crazy pace at which the medium itself moves.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[thegarbz]

The mark of a great athlete is their ability to adapt. The actual method or game they are playing is irrelevant, and so is the fact that {FPS of the day} will be replaced with {new FPS of the day} in a tournament. The same applies to strategy.

Also the fact that you think sports are unchanged for 500 years (or even 50 years) is laughable.
You may be surprised to see what Tennis looked like 500 years ago

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[ZeRu]

Chess can be played in 500 years same as we play it today. So can football, baseball, any sport you can think of.

Except car racing, which is constantly evolving, just like computer games (and has a lot more common with e-sports than chess or football). It, however, isn't an olympic sport, and I think it shouldn't be (even though I'm a big fan of it) since that would force the car racing to submit into certain cliches, removing the charm that comes from every track and car being different.

Racing cars get replaced my more modern version and so do competitive video games, but the main premise won't change much for as long as it has clear and attractive goals. Even CS:GO has the same basic rules as the original CounterStrike that got released 20 years ago.

Re:Cheating at Tournaments

[sysrammer]

I might mention that, depending on the game and architecture, it sometimes happens that the local client is "catching up" to the server. You give the local client the command to fire, and you start firing. On the server, though, the opponents action was registered before your fire command. And you die, though you "clearly" see that you shot first. Sort of a reverse Greedo.

Re: Cheating at Tournaments

[Gussington]

Well, in gaming the people giving you money are directly impacted. In cycling the riders are not giving the money rather taking it.

Um, cyclists all around the world pay money for bikes, clothes, accessories, competition entry etc. The few pros at the top get freebies and win cash, but the bottom 99.9% pay to play. It is exactly the same concept

Re: Cheating at Tournaments

[Luthair]

The Point
Your Header

And none of those cyclists are affected by what happens in the tournament. Whereas in gaming, cheaters are playing in your matches which directly impacts you.

Re: Cheating at Tournaments

[Gussington]

The Point Your Header

And none of those cyclists are affected by what happens in the tournament. Whereas in gaming, cheaters are playing in your matches which directly impacts you.

I can only assume you know nothing about any sports ever. Go down to any sports field, court, track on any weekend and you will find millions of people who have paid for the privilege of competing. Further up the chain some of those people get a small reward for their efforts, and right at the top a small few get paid a lot. But at all levels, in all types of events, people cheat. This is nothing new just because the chosen 'sport' takes place on a computer.

Not that easy

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

It's almost impossible to eradicate cheaters in CS:GO and similar games for one important reason: CS:GO servers send you full information about all the gamers who're playing the match with you, which means it's quite trivial to intercept this information and modify certain game engine variables to e.g. make other players visible though the walls (wallhack) or to make your bullets always reach the destination (aimbot). Now even if you don't send all the information, the game still has to show other visible nearby players to you, so dealing with aimbots seems like a lost game.

Speaking frankly I've got no idea if this problem can be fixed at all except for controlled LAN matches (but even then we've had reports that certain cheaters made through by bringing their cheat programs inside their mice - the mouse is connected via USB which makes it trivial to extend its internals to include a mass storage device).

To give Valve credit they're now testing an AI to detect cheaters. They do it because it's virtually impossible to detect cheat applications using any sort of matching (like antiviruses do).

Re: Not that easy

[Luthair]

I always thought it was odd they relied on the client to determine whether the bullet would hit. I would have expected a trajectory (and the server knows the starting point). But I assume the game devs aren't all dumb so there must be performance reasons to rely on the client. Maybe they could check only some of the bullets that hit. It ought to be easy to find the wall hacks from a tape of the game though.

Re:Not that easy

[Eloking]

It's almost impossible to eradicate cheaters in CS:GO and similar games for one important reason: CS:GO servers send you full information about all the gamers who're playing the match with you, which means it's quite trivial to intercept this information and modify certain game engine variables to e.g. make other players visible though the walls (wallhack) or to make your bullets always reach the destination (aimbot). Now even if you don't send all the information, the game still has to show other visible nearby players to you, so dealing with aimbots seems like a lost game.

Well, the root of the problem is in this very paragraph.

As long as a competitive game will calculate stuff on the client side, hacking will happen. As the technology of hacking software grow, sooner or later we'll have to switch server side.

Let me give you an example of an extreme. The game could be computed 100% on the Server side and the client receive the audio + video output over the internet. Then client send the input (keyboard + mouse) to the server. Eventually hacker will figure out a way to analyse the screen to identify other player and control the mouse accordingly but most problematic hack will be neutralized this way.

Of course, computing "everything" server side and sending the video over the internet is a bit extreme (well, until everyone is connected to Google Fiber) but you get the point. To solve hacking, find their input and move them from client side to server side.

Re: Not that easy

[drinkypoo]

I always thought it was odd they relied on the client to determine whether the bullet would hit.

They don't. But they rely on the client to determine whether or not the players can see one another. If you tamper with the client then you can get more information than you're supposed to have.

It ought to be easy to find the wall hacks from a tape of the game though.

It seems to me like there ought to be a log of every shot in the game; timestamp, initiating actor, a list of who took damage and how much they took and whether it was direct or splash damage, and the positions and facing of all the relevant actors. Ideally you would actually log literally everything for later replay, every single event. Now that would be professional.

Lame...

[Freischutz]

This 'invasion' would be way cooler if the bot manifested itself as an army of annoying hecklers that you can shoot.

Re:The hacker cares more than Valve

[murdocj]

Well, then play a different game, no?

Re:TERRORISTS WIN

[DontBeAMoran]

The rubber chicken did it.

Who cares?

[circularWaffle]

I bought GO a while back, have played it maybe a couple hours total? 1.6 was where it was at, and still is. I play 1.6 way more than GO will ever get my attention.

Re: The hacker cares more than Valve

[murdocj]

So I'm not allowed to comment, comrade trump?

Analogy

[spineboy]

I agree. It's more like

"Hey your house is unlocked, so we decided to have a party - sorry you can't use it now."

Re:Analogy

[Gussington]

I agree. It's more like

"Hey your house is unlocked, so we decided to have a party - sorry you can't use it now."

Which is equally illegal...