Playtron are quietly building up their Linux-based PlaytronOS behind the scenes, and not only have they released their first Alpha but they've pulled in another investor too.
It’s bazzite with a custom UI instead of Steam Big Picture and no desktop mode. Their big claim seems to be that they say that they have solved anti cheat on Linux: the system generates a checksum of the kernel space, the anti cheat then compares this checksum with the one on file. No custom kernel module needed on the part of the anti cheat dev. At least in theory.
I’m interested in them finding a way to get AC working, but I really dislike this method of doing so. There are a ton of kernel variations, so this would really only work on specific distros and devices. This becoming standard would likely mean being unable to use optimized kernels, different schedulers, and other kernel modules like the ZFS drivers.
I’m having a hard time understanding how this would work. udev will load kernel modules depending on your hardware, and these modules run in kernel space. Is there an assumption that a kernel module can’t cheat? Or do they have a checksum for each possible kernel module that can be loaded?
Also, how do they read the kernel space code? Userspace can’t do this afaik. Do they load a custom kernel module to do this? Who says it can’t just be replaced with a module that returns the “right” checksum?
Here is the quote I paraphrased in my comment (I’m sure I got something wrong):
The immutable file system from Fedora Silverblue will be very helpful in implementing our anti cheat system but it is not our anti cheat system. We are planning to generate signatures for each version of our OS (easy with Silverblue) as well as all the DLLs we install dynamically. Basically using our SDK, a game developer will be able to obtain a signature of the current config on the device then call our backend to verify that this is a genuine Playtron version.
Ah, so they don’t actually say that they read kernel space. They check the version of all installed packages and checksum the installed DLLs/SOs.
If the user still has root privileges, this may still not prevent sideloading of kernel modules. Even if it would detect a kernel module that has been sideloaded, I believe it’s possible to write a kernel module that will still be resident after you unload it. This kernel module can then basically do anything without the knowledge of userspace. It could for example easily replace any code running in userspace, and their anticheat would miss that as it doesn’t actually check what code is currently running. Most simply, code could be injected that skips the anticheat.
Of course, in their model, if a user isn’t given root privileges it seems much harder to do anything, then probably the first thing you’d want to look for is a privilege escalation attack to obtain root privileges. This might not be that hard if they for example run Xorg as it isn’t known to be the most secure - there’s a reason there’s a strong recommendation to not run any graphical UI on servers.
Another way if you don’t have root is to simply run the code on a system that does but that does have such a kernel module - or perhaps modify the binary itself to skip the anticheat. I don’t see anything preventing that in their scheme.
Anti-cheat doesn’t actually need to eliminate cheating, it just needs to make the masses think it works by slightly raising the bar for entry into cheating. Cheating is still rampant, players just feel better about it and complain about smurfs more because they dont think its possible to get around kernal level anti-cheats.
Honestly I’d be much happier if the industry moved away form terrible anti-cheat software in general.
I wish more people understood this: Riot’s anti-cheat isn’t perfect and you can find how to cheat online fairly easily actually, but you have to jump over so many hoops and spend a fair amount of cash to do it (depending on method) that it’s basically an exercise for motivated hackers that want to prove a point, not your script kiddie that wants easy wins.
Exactly. The average Joe sees he can’t just download hacks and suddenly be good, assumes the anti-cheat works, and then when they still get owned complains about something else instead of cheaters and is happily giving shady game publishers the highest level access to their computer like its nothing.
It’s bazzite with a custom UI instead of Steam Big Picture and no desktop mode. Their big claim seems to be that they say that they have solved anti cheat on Linux: the system generates a checksum of the kernel space, the anti cheat then compares this checksum with the one on file. No custom kernel module needed on the part of the anti cheat dev. At least in theory.
I’m interested in them finding a way to get AC working, but I really dislike this method of doing so. There are a ton of kernel variations, so this would really only work on specific distros and devices. This becoming standard would likely mean being unable to use optimized kernels, different schedulers, and other kernel modules like the ZFS drivers.
I’m having a hard time understanding how this would work. udev will load kernel modules depending on your hardware, and these modules run in kernel space. Is there an assumption that a kernel module can’t cheat? Or do they have a checksum for each possible kernel module that can be loaded?
Also, how do they read the kernel space code? Userspace can’t do this afaik. Do they load a custom kernel module to do this? Who says it can’t just be replaced with a module that returns the “right” checksum?
Here is the quote I paraphrased in my comment (I’m sure I got something wrong):
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/19/24106356/playtron-explains-how-immutable-file-systems-are-not-but-could-help-with-linux-anti-cheat
Ah, so they don’t actually say that they read kernel space. They check the version of all installed packages and checksum the installed DLLs/SOs.
If the user still has root privileges, this may still not prevent sideloading of kernel modules. Even if it would detect a kernel module that has been sideloaded, I believe it’s possible to write a kernel module that will still be resident after you unload it. This kernel module can then basically do anything without the knowledge of userspace. It could for example easily replace any code running in userspace, and their anticheat would miss that as it doesn’t actually check what code is currently running. Most simply, code could be injected that skips the anticheat.
Of course, in their model, if a user isn’t given root privileges it seems much harder to do anything, then probably the first thing you’d want to look for is a privilege escalation attack to obtain root privileges. This might not be that hard if they for example run Xorg as it isn’t known to be the most secure - there’s a reason there’s a strong recommendation to not run any graphical UI on servers.
Another way if you don’t have root is to simply run the code on a system that does but that does have such a kernel module - or perhaps modify the binary itself to skip the anticheat. I don’t see anything preventing that in their scheme.
Anti-cheat doesn’t actually need to eliminate cheating, it just needs to make the masses think it works by slightly raising the bar for entry into cheating. Cheating is still rampant, players just feel better about it and complain about smurfs more because they dont think its possible to get around kernal level anti-cheats.
Honestly I’d be much happier if the industry moved away form terrible anti-cheat software in general.
I wish more people understood this: Riot’s anti-cheat isn’t perfect and you can find how to cheat online fairly easily actually, but you have to jump over so many hoops and spend a fair amount of cash to do it (depending on method) that it’s basically an exercise for motivated hackers that want to prove a point, not your script kiddie that wants easy wins.
Exactly. The average Joe sees he can’t just download hacks and suddenly be good, assumes the anti-cheat works, and then when they still get owned complains about something else instead of cheaters and is happily giving shady game publishers the highest level access to their computer like its nothing.
Desktop mode is coming, its just not implemented yet
I was discussing this a few months back; an immutable fs is way more secure for gaming compared to Windows.