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himata4113yesterday at 12:15 PM1 replyview on HN

this is a common misconception, just because you're in kernel-mode doesn't mean you are immediately undetected and things are not as easy people initinally think.

First, point of ingress: registry, file caches, dns, vulnerable driver logs.

Memory probe detection: workingsets, page guards, non trivial obfuscation, atoms, fibers.

Detection: usermode exposes a lot of kernel internals: raw access to window and process handles, 'undocumented' syscalls, win32, user32, kiucd, apcs.

Loss of functionality: no hooks, limited point of ingress, hardened obfuscation, encrypted pages, tamper protection.

I could go on, but generally "lol go kernelmode" is sometimes way more difficult than just hiding yourself among the legitimate functionality of 3rd party applications.

This is everything used by anticheats today, from usermode. The kernel module is more often than not used for integrity checks, vm detection and walking physical memory.


Replies

phendrenad2yesterday at 4:15 PM

It's too bad we have to play this semantics game of "most vs all" every. Single. Time. On. This Damn Site.

So let me summarize the above thread:

Yes, there will always be workarounds for ANY level of anti-cheat. Yes, kernel-mode anti-cheat detects a higher number of cheats in practice, and that superiority seems durable going forward.

There, I think we can all agree on those. No need to reiterate what has already been posted.

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