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Windows Operating Systems Software Technology

Anti-Cheat Software Causing Big Problems For Windows 10 Previews (arstechnica.com) 116

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Windows 10 Insider Preview Slow Ring -- the beta track that's meant to receive only those builds that are free from any known serious problems -- hasn't received an update for months. While the fast ring is currently testing previews of the April 2019 release, codenamed 19H1, and the even-faster skip-ahead ring is testing previews not of the October 2019 release, 19H2, but of the April 2020 release, 20H1, the Slow Ring is yet to receive a single 19H1 build. This has prompted some concern among insiders that perhaps the ring has been forgotten about, and it has even caused a few complaints from companies that are using the Windows Insider for Business program to validate new Windows releases before their launch. Without Slow Ring builds to test, there's nothing to validate, meaning that they'll have to delay deployment of 19H1 once it ships.

Microsoft's Dona Sarkar, chief of the Windows Insider program, explained yesterday what the problem is, and in many ways it's a throwback to Windows' past, before the days of DEP and ASLR and PatchGuard and all the other measures Microsoft has implemented to harden Windows against malicious software: the build is crashing when some unspecified common anti-cheat software is used. Sarkar's tweet says that the software causes a GSOD, for Green Screen of Death; the traditional and disappointingly familiar Blue Screen of Death, denoting that Windows has suffered a fatal error, is colored green for preview releases so they can be distinguished at a glance from crashes of stable builds. Fast ring builds have the same GSOD issue, and indeed, it has been listed on their known issues list for many months. Sarkar says that the fix must come from the third-party company that developed the anti-cheat software.
In an update, Ars Technica's Peter Bright says Microsoft has pushed a build to the Slow Ring, number 18342.8, but the GSOD issue remains. "To avoid crashing machines, the build won't be offered to any system that has the offending anti-cheat software installed," Bright writes. "It's not clear why this approach could not have been used months ago."
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Anti-Cheat Software Causing Big Problems For Windows 10 Previews

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:32PM (#58196236)

    Why does what amounts to spyware get preferential treatment?

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Thursday February 28, 2019 @05:16PM (#58196472)

      Why does what amounts to spyware get preferential treatment?

      Because cheating is rampant in online games, and anti-cheats are needed to even have a modicum of fair play online. Unless you're one to believe the only way to play online is consoles only and basically the PC should be discarded as a gaming device.

      The solution to this is simple: games shouldn't be loading their own kernel drivers.

      Sadly cheats are generally programs that either run the target game in debug mode (with the cheat as the debugger) and thus undetectable to the game, or as a separate executable and hijack network traffic. Kernel drivers are required to break these kind of things.

      And for what it's worth, the anti cheat software in question is used by Fortnite, among other games. That's kind of why it's a big deal.

      And cheating is so rampant online among PC users that an aspect of PC gaming would be destroyed without anti-cheat software letting people play legitimately. Maybe PC users don't care, but it would be pretty sad if the only way to play online was to pay for Playstation Plus or Xbox Live Gold.

      • Because cheating is rampant in online games, and anti-cheats are needed to even have a modicum of fair play online. Unless you're one to believe the only way to play online is consoles only and basically the PC should be discarded as a gaming device.

        Play on PC with people you know from outside the game who can be trusted not to cheat.

      • by scdeimos ( 632778 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @06:02PM (#58196644)

        Kernel drivers are required to break these kind of things.

        And kernel drivers have to be signed. Microsoft should just blacklist drivers signed by the anti-cheat software developer's key until they can get their shit together.

        • They only need signed with default boot options. You can load Windows with Signed driver enforcement disabled
        • Microsoft should just blacklist drivers signed by the anti-cheat software developer's key until they can get their shit together.

          Because getting an error message and being unable to play the game is so much better than getting a Green Screen of Death and being unable to play a game?

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        You missed the bit where cheats are sold by companies as microtransactions which is A OK for the corporations but that gamers hate. Not installing the update if anti-cheat software installed and of course woo hoo a big ole fuck you for players who install the game after the update when it crashes, why is that bloody problem solved, now you can blame them, typical M$.

      • by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "And cheating is so rampant online among PC users that an aspect of PC gaming would be destroyed without anti-cheat software letting people play legitimately."

        Funny, can't find anyone hacking in oldskool Doom online. Not that you need to with the weapons available now days thanks to a still-living mod community.

        Maybe the coders of these other games should #learntocode. We got it right in our little community (made up now almost entirely of hackers of some level,) why the fuck can't they get it right in thei

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Funny, can't find anyone hacking in oldskool Doom online. Not that you need to with the weapons available now days thanks to a still-living mod community.

          Maybe the coders of these other games should #learntocode. We got it right in our little community (made up now almost entirely of hackers of some level,) why the fuck can't they get it right in theirs?

          Because no one plays oldskool Doom anymore? I'm sure once you add in about a million players, you'll start to see online cheating. And just so you know, the

          • by Khyber ( 864651 )

            "Because no one plays oldskool Doom anymore?"

            As of my last current master server refresh ten minutes ago: 536 servers, 491 players online.

            Nice to know you can't do basic research and check players counts for yourself. Moron.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Many gaming monitors include an on-screen aiming sight, which is entirely handled by the monitor and completely undetectable to the PC.

        Only way around that is to add a gunsight to the game so at least everyone is on the same level.

    • go play the original COD Modern Warfare, Not even sure if you can actually, but last I heard (2014...ish?) it was less a game and more an exercise in how far you could push online cheat engines. There were accusations that Activision ignored the cheaters so people would move on to the current release (now with more Microtransactions(c) ).
  • by Myria ( 562655 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:44PM (#58196290)

    The solution to this is simple: games shouldn't be loading their own kernel drivers.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @05:59PM (#58196630)

      You're either someone who is into cheating, developer of cheat engines, or utterly ignorant of how cheating in PC multiplayer games commonly works.

      Or you're an absolute guru in the field, and can code a solution that works and doesn't require it. In which case, I have a question. Why are you posting here instead of picking up that easy ten to eleven digit pay-off?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        What is with the inquisitorial attitude?

        Either you are for burning witches or you are a witch yourself.

        Come off it.

        And nobody is making "ten to eleven digit pay-off[s]" in anti-cheat software. The whole damn field is a cancer. Calculate on serverside. Don't be cheap and rely on client software. Done. That's your anti-cheat.

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          The fact that games I like can get ruined by cheaters is more than enough for the attitude. Rampant cheating kills games.

          And I agree, cheating field is cancer. Which is why anti-cheats have to be invasive to cure it. When disease is both as virulent and as lethal as modern cheating in multiplayer games is, cure working is more important that cure triggering a few idealists and cheaters.

        • We had client hacks like auto aim, radar/esp, see through walls, no shadows, etc. back in Quake. The first one. It's not as simple as getting rid of modern client side tricks.

          Without the most basic anti-cheat protections, there are client side mods - louder footsteps, replaced grenade priming sound with ticking or countdown, custom player models with long spikes protruding along every axis, textures that are reflective or glow in the dark, in general make any sort of concealment or stealth impossible.

          Ther

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Third option: The OS should provide enough protection for applications that they don't need their own kernel drivers.

        The OS does provide some protection, e.g. you can mark memory as needing to be secure and it won't appear in crash dumps and will be inaccessible even to debug tools. Gotta protect that DRMed media.

    • Maybe games *shouldn't* be loading their own kernel drivers but we certainly want open systems where games *can* load their own kernel drivers. One of the big themes that is generally agreed upon around here is that end users should be in charge of their own systems. I don't play Fortnite and certainly *won't* be installing these but why should Microsoft be the one to decide which kernel drives the users are allowed to put on their own hardware? There would be an outcry if Microsoft prevented the loading
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:46PM (#58196306)
    Three sides of the same coin.
  • GSOD (Score:4, Funny)

    by Suren Enfiajyan ( 4600031 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:47PM (#58196312)
    At least it doesn't give BSOD.
  • Part of the plan to lock out steam and others!

    Ms wants to make it all locked down MS store / Xbox that they get an 30% cut.

  • by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:59PM (#58196386) Journal

    I'd prefer an ultra Ultra slow and very stable tested train of updates.

    You know maybe even give it a name, a more simplified ui, call it something like windows 7 or something like that.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For me personally, windows 10 is just too damn much. I put up with windows 7, but now that it is at end of life, I am not making the jump to 10.

      I have played with Linux before, several years ago, but the issues were enough that I stayed with windows. Now, I am ready to jump in with both feet.

      Microsoft has pushed me too far.

  • the reasons that Windows 7 Pro will most likely be my last Windows Workstations (have 2) when it goes EOL.

    At that point, I am thinking bye bye Windows/Microsoft everything. So you know what, I don't much care. After all, they really are heading to remote monthly subscription based everything anyway.

    I refuse to use any of that kind of stuff in "my" business. Basically, limited accounts to deal with client work. And when the time comes I will let those clients go elsewhere for that work.

    Just my 2 cents ;
  • by lamer01 ( 1097759 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @06:48PM (#58196826)
    I would jump ship off win 10 so fast. It has to be the worst OS since Vista. I mean if it were a pure OS it would be great as it does some things really well. But since MSFT decided that windows won't be just an OS anymore it tries to do things it should not do. I don't need my OS to spy on me or update at inopportune times.
    • As already mentioned somewhere else, steam on linux now ships with wine for playing windows games. Plus if you have the skills to hack on wine, steam makes it easy to use your own version so you can submit patches upstream to help everyone else move to linux.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    >_ the traditional and disappointingly familiar Blue Screen of Death, denoting that Windows has suffered a fatal error, is colored green for preview releases so they can be distinguished at a glance from crashes of stable builds.

    That's how you know you're using Windows' stable version...

  • I have a few tools that require licences and the licence checking software occasionally breaks when their is a windows update. I would prefer it if the makers of the tools actually gave an update when windows broke things as opposed to thousands of developers scrambling and wasting hours on these problems.
  • Well, it could have, but I assume that Microsoft alerted the company involved and had expected a fix to be released.

    What's not clear to me is why Microsoft has failed to provide a workaround for this. The only reason I can think of is that the software has a vulnerability which is deliberately asserted.

  • Don't forget: anti-cheat is key to online games that rely on online economies chased with real world dollars. If anti-cheat breaks, there's gonna be some severe heartbreak for the heartless.
  • It's a test build, it's even states that the build shouldn't be used for day to day operating. And isn't the problem here the anti-cheat software, so shouldn't THEY fix the reason why that particular version of windows is crashing (unless ofcourse they are using the API's as they should be used and not do something they shouldn't)?

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