From both a technical perspective and if the maintainers of these anti-cheat will consider porting or re-writing kernel level anti-cheat to work on linux, is it possible? Do you think that the maintainers of kernel level anti-cheat will be adamant in not doing it, or that the kernel even supports it or will support it. I think that if it ever happens, there will be a influx of people moving to linux, or abandoning their duelboots, and that alot of people will hate that such a thing is available on linux.
Short answer: no
Long answer: only the most important things should even have such low-level access to the system. A fucking game is not in that category. Nooooooo
Every IT-literate person fights kernel-lvl malware disguising as games with everything they got.
Since Linux has a high percentage of those, I hope those “solutions” will never spread
I can’t wait until I am able to give random programs kernel access on my system! That doesn’t sound problematic in the least! After all, I have the fullest confidence that for companies developing anticheat, my security is their highest concern! /s
@phantomwise @SpiderUnderUrBed Every program on your system has “kernel access”, it’s called “syscalls”, but actually being able to modify the kernel, that is another matter.
lol 🤣. Aren’t you a tech guy?
It’s relatively trivial, you just need to write a kernel module. You’d just need/want to make it gpl so everything it does is fully audited and transparent. That’s not a problem, is it? Right?
From a technical standpoint, you could argue that someone could create a fork of the kernel that spoofs the interface that the anticheat uses to make it ignore things. You can, of course, also do something similar in Windows, but security theatre never let practicality get in the way.
I surely hope they never will, no user program should ever be allowed to run at kernel level, that’s what malware does.
I personally avoid those kind of games, but those who won’t can dual-boot.
Same
From technical point of view it is possible. eBPF already has almost everything needed for doing that. And I think it can be done with a simple LKM but if they want it included in the main tree I’m sure they’ll get some colorful email from Linus.
I really want to see that email.
It’s the other way around. Windows will stop supporting kernel level anti-cheat because of Crowdstrike
They want to provide APIs that basically do an equal job but will restrict direct access.
Good one
kernel level anti cheat is malware
abandon ranked, return to private lobbies
Sure hope not. If I wanted to run rookits I’d just use Windows. Why bother with Linux?
This is why I don’t want more Linux adoption and don’t understand people cheering every new user. We’re in a sweet spot where a lot of games enable userland anticheat while we don’t get kernel level ports (however they may be shipped doesn’t matter). The only thing that’ll come out of more adoption is kernel level anticheat ports that’ll probably work with a few corporate backed distros only and we’ll actually lose the games we have today. Because those will switch over the kernel level alternatives too.
The only way I’d like Linux to be a generic multiplayer platform is server side anticheats. It is very obviously the way to go and we are seeing extremely slow adoption (e.g. Marvel Rivals).
I think the more people who aren’t using corporate operating systems, the better.
I’m firmly against Microsoft, Red Hat, and Ubuntu.
On one side, I’m one of those glad for people coming to Linux because Linux is truly fantastic and it can make your life easier on many things, I’m happy for them.
On the other side, I share your concerns, because everything that gets adopted by the masses is inevitably subject to enshittification, I would never want that to happen to Linux.
We should find a sweet middle-point tho I have no idea what that would be.
TBH I’m not sure wider adoption would worsen things ? Gaming distros would probably ship bullshit anticheat modules by default while the others would not, or at most provide some documentation on how to opt in.
I think it’s quite similar to the situation with NVIDIA proprietary drivers? (I don’t own a graphics card so I’m not super aware on this topic)
My point is you would either have to run those modules on Linux or not play the games. Which is the same as running them on Windows or not play the games with the exception that you’d lose the games that run on Linux with userland anticheat now.
I sure hope not. Play on someone else’s pc if you want them to have control.
AFAIK Microsoft have plans to block kernel level anti-cheat on Windows. After the CrowdSec issues last year, they’re rethinking which types of programs should even be allowed to run in kernel space.
Edit: I was wrong. They actually want to increase what can be done in user mode, to reduce reliance on kernel mode code.
They actually want to increase what can be done in user mode, to reduce reliance on kernel mode code.
That’s basically what Apple did with macOS 11. They deprecated kernel extensions and replaced them with “system extensions”, and created new APIs so security tools, VPNs and such could function without kernel-level privileges.
They don’t. One article lied, people never read anything but the title and here we are this getting mentioned every once in a while.
Thanks. I looked into it a bit more and it looks like they actually want to increase what can be done in userland, to reduce the reliance on kernel mode. That’s still a good solution, if things the anti-cheat code needs to do can be moved into userland.
i assume the problem with league of legends since last year is because they switched to kernel level anticheat then? would be nice if they get kicked in the face for the anti-linux decision they made so we can start playing again :P
Yes, linux does not work exactly because they require this kernel level anticheat. But guess which os is supported without this anticheat… MacOs…
I guess it’s easier to dual boot Linux than osx for cheaters and I think most of them wouldn’t buy apple hardware just to get out of bronze.
I just itch my moba itch with dota
I tried Dota but it feels too different :(
Fair enough
I think its less a question of the technical feasibility, and more of an issue that we, as users, don’t want more closed-source blobs in our kernels. Meanwhile, the publishers insist that they can’t open-source their anti-cheat code; Their idea being that if we know what’s in it, it will be easier to bypass.
Basically, one distro or a few(at most) may get anti-cheat integrated one day(like, say, SteamOS), but it will likely never be in your standard Linux kernal.
They could go the rought of kernel modules, I would think, but for whatever reason, we’re still having this conversation.
Basically, one distro or a few(at most) may get anti-cheat integrated one day(like, say, SteamOS), but it will likely never be in your standard Linux kernal.
Valve also has server side anticheat in his games (Counter Strike or Deadlock). They are also against it.
Kernel-level anticheats can be bypassed anyways, but they are the easy solution for the corps that want to sell their multiplayer game.
Shite is still shite, even if it’s open source shite.
@MachineFab812 @SpiderUnderUrBed even if you have steamOS, what keeps you from downloading kernels from kernel.org and building?
If you want it to still be steam OS and compatible with games then you couldn’t use kernel.org kernels that’s the point.
Fundamentally it becomes a console not a PC. That’s WHAT steamOS would be in this hypothetical.
Absolutely nothing prevents somebody from writing a kernel level anticheat on Linux.
Users would throw a fit, and it would be way easier to bypass, but it certainly could be made.
It would need to be open source, distributing proprietary kernel modules is a nightmare that can cause the OS to fail to boot after every kernel update. An open source anticheat kernel module would probably be useless and easy to bypass.
It doesn’t “need” to be anything. It could be a DKMS module that is mandatory for playing a game.
Whether people would like it and use it is a completely different story.
Doesn’t Splitgate 2 have kernel level anti cheat that works on Linux? Maybe it is “trapped” inside wine/proton but they explicitly made it work and people are thanking them on steam discussions.
Helldivers 2 works (or at least used to when I played it) as well, while requiring kernel access on windows
Meanwhile in indie land, I just tried to cheat my way through a Chapter 3 minigame in Deltarune, and Toby Fox himself showed up in his dogsona to blow up the game and make me start the minigame over.
This is the extent to which anti-cheat measures should go.
