I read your comment and I’m familiar with the technology. I’m not insinuating they’re putting anything sleazy in the kernel, in fact I acknowledge there are practical security benefits to it. That’s where a lot of the nuance comes in.
Secure Boot and the TPM help verify the boot process and that it hasn’t been tampered with. I keep mentioning TPM as well because it’s part of the mechanisms already in place with CoD[1], it has remote attestation[2], and has been pitched as a DRM mechanism since at least 2009[3]. This makes a lot more sense in a corporate/enterprise environment where you’re either using a company issued laptop or your BYOD device needs to prove it’s up to a standard worthy of trust to connect and interact with network resources. In this scenario the company has created a secure platform and your device needs to be trusted within it.
But on a consumer level, while you can still argue there’s protection from tampering by malicious parties with the boot process, you have to ask yourself what platform you’re participating in and why. This is the equivalent of allowing the cops to put a camera in your house on the grounds that if everyone is watched it’ll reduce crime. Microsoft (or whatever game developer) wants to know your device can be trusted on their platform and you need to submit to whatever those standards are. Allowing EAC is opening the door to that process. If Microsoft sniffs something out on your PC they don’t like, they can decline to run the software. It gives them right of denial over what your system looks like. They can enforce you to run telemetry scraping services as part of the configuration that must be in place to trust your device.
So while I don’t have any proof that this is being used quite in that manner yet, or even what it might eventually look like, it is well within possibility. And we know the tech industry absolutely has an appetite for it. This is the Sony rootkit scandal from 2005 except now they just tell you they’re doing it instead of trying to hide the fact.
You’re free to make of that information what you will and evaluate how much of a likely threat you perceive any of that to be and if it’s worth the tradeoff. And sorry about the people downvoting you, I’m just trying to get this information out there. It’s complicated and nuanced, I get it.
I couldn’t care less about the downvotes, just like you I’m just interested in having a good conversation and sharing accurate information. So thank you for providing it!
You’re right about all of that. Especially the takeaway that it’s nuanced. Yeah, it really is.
I think what most people, including you, are reacting to is who is doing this rather than what is being done. And rightly so. I don’t want to trust Epic (or Mic🤮soft) with this kind of thing. But anti-cheat is nuanced, and I think I can persuade you (if you don’t agree already) that some kind of anti-cheat that actually works to some extent is needed.
You brought up:
… you have to ask yourself what platform you’re participating in and why.
I think the answer is pretty obvious here. The platform is an online game. Let’s say Fortnite just because it’s the obvious example to use (personally I’ve never played it). The reason you want to participate is for fun, for competition (maybe even professional), or both.
One thing is very clear: if other people playing Fortnite are cheating when playing with you, it prevents you from having fun or winning the competition. Unless you are a cheater yourself, you only want to play with non-cheaters.
So obviously you want there to be some way you can play Fortnite with some level of guarantee that other players aren’t cheating.
So let’s say you, the player, get to decide how this is enforced. The stipulation is that every player including you will be subject to the same level of enforcement, and any player that isn’t will be locked out of the platform. How do you do it?
You and every player will have to somehow credibly convince the game that you’re not cheating. The only way to do that is to reveal some information about the system running the game. The TPM and all those other technologies that you seem to understand much better than I do, are the way to do that credibly. The only question left, then, is which information (or “how much”) would actually be sent to the server to provide this proof.
That’s the trade-off. I agree with you that these companies will almost inevitably exploit this system to extract data about you that has nothing to do with cheating. If not at first, then soon afterwards. And that’s an endless battle that we’ll continue to fight. But it’s also besides the fundamental point.
Cheating in online games is a real problem that actually needs solutions. I think the framework presented by EAC v2 is a good one, and can be used to enforce anti-cheat on Linux without spying on you in any other way. That, I think, is a good thing.
What would be best, of course, is if a more trustworthy organization made a similar anti-cheat solution following EAC v2’s footsteps.
I read your comment and I’m familiar with the technology. I’m not insinuating they’re putting anything sleazy in the kernel, in fact I acknowledge there are practical security benefits to it. That’s where a lot of the nuance comes in.
Secure Boot and the TPM help verify the boot process and that it hasn’t been tampered with. I keep mentioning TPM as well because it’s part of the mechanisms already in place with CoD[1], it has remote attestation[2], and has been pitched as a DRM mechanism since at least 2009[3]. This makes a lot more sense in a corporate/enterprise environment where you’re either using a company issued laptop or your BYOD device needs to prove it’s up to a standard worthy of trust to connect and interact with network resources. In this scenario the company has created a secure platform and your device needs to be trusted within it.
But on a consumer level, while you can still argue there’s protection from tampering by malicious parties with the boot process, you have to ask yourself what platform you’re participating in and why. This is the equivalent of allowing the cops to put a camera in your house on the grounds that if everyone is watched it’ll reduce crime. Microsoft (or whatever game developer) wants to know your device can be trusted on their platform and you need to submit to whatever those standards are. Allowing EAC is opening the door to that process. If Microsoft sniffs something out on your PC they don’t like, they can decline to run the software. It gives them right of denial over what your system looks like. They can enforce you to run telemetry scraping services as part of the configuration that must be in place to trust your device.
So while I don’t have any proof that this is being used quite in that manner yet, or even what it might eventually look like, it is well within possibility. And we know the tech industry absolutely has an appetite for it. This is the Sony rootkit scandal from 2005 except now they just tell you they’re doing it instead of trying to hide the fact.
You’re free to make of that information what you will and evaluate how much of a likely threat you perceive any of that to be and if it’s worth the tradeoff. And sorry about the people downvoting you, I’m just trying to get this information out there. It’s complicated and nuanced, I get it.
Thanks.
I couldn’t care less about the downvotes, just like you I’m just interested in having a good conversation and sharing accurate information. So thank you for providing it!
You’re right about all of that. Especially the takeaway that it’s nuanced. Yeah, it really is.
I think what most people, including you, are reacting to is who is doing this rather than what is being done. And rightly so. I don’t want to trust Epic (or Mic🤮soft) with this kind of thing. But anti-cheat is nuanced, and I think I can persuade you (if you don’t agree already) that some kind of anti-cheat that actually works to some extent is needed.
You brought up:
I think the answer is pretty obvious here. The platform is an online game. Let’s say Fortnite just because it’s the obvious example to use (personally I’ve never played it). The reason you want to participate is for fun, for competition (maybe even professional), or both.
One thing is very clear: if other people playing Fortnite are cheating when playing with you, it prevents you from having fun or winning the competition. Unless you are a cheater yourself, you only want to play with non-cheaters.
So obviously you want there to be some way you can play Fortnite with some level of guarantee that other players aren’t cheating.
So let’s say you, the player, get to decide how this is enforced. The stipulation is that every player including you will be subject to the same level of enforcement, and any player that isn’t will be locked out of the platform. How do you do it?
You and every player will have to somehow credibly convince the game that you’re not cheating. The only way to do that is to reveal some information about the system running the game. The TPM and all those other technologies that you seem to understand much better than I do, are the way to do that credibly. The only question left, then, is which information (or “how much”) would actually be sent to the server to provide this proof.
That’s the trade-off. I agree with you that these companies will almost inevitably exploit this system to extract data about you that has nothing to do with cheating. If not at first, then soon afterwards. And that’s an endless battle that we’ll continue to fight. But it’s also besides the fundamental point.
Cheating in online games is a real problem that actually needs solutions. I think the framework presented by EAC v2 is a good one, and can be used to enforce anti-cheat on Linux without spying on you in any other way. That, I think, is a good thing.
What would be best, of course, is if a more trustworthy organization made a similar anti-cheat solution following EAC v2’s footsteps.