this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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You buy a Sony CD and decide to play it on your computer.
Your computer now has a rootkit installed.
And these days people just install the rootkit, only it's allegedly to prevent game cheating.
And, when called out, everyone tells you you're a paranoid, tinfoil hat wearing, organ trafficking criminal
That's because you guys throw around the word "rootkit" like my parents call everything "woke" or "communist."
You probably couldn't even define what a rootkit is yet you're scared shitless of a thing you can't properly define.
So yeah, anyone who's afraid of something they don't even understand fully is absolutely paranoid.
Most people are not fully cognizant of the rights they sign away in a click through. There is paranoid and there is prudent.
Read the EULA, if you don't want an anticheat that requires those permissions then don't install the game.
Something having kernel access doesn't make it a rootkit, it makes it high-risk for misuse by a threat actor. Only if the software was exploited by a bad actor to acquire root/hardware permissions would this issue actually become something.
That, or if the anticheat wasn't uninstallable and/or dodged scans intended to locate it, etc.
Putting the responsibility to understand legalese (and advanced concepts like rootkits) to such an extent on the end user is just straight gaslighting. Nobody has the required expertise to determine what an EULA actually says outside of the lawyer who wrote it, and even then, I wouldn't guarantee it.
Damn now we are misusing gaslighting as well to just mean "hiding something."
Ugh. As in blaming someone, casting aspersions on them for something that isn't their fault or responsibility. Words broaden in meaning. If you're going to quibble about semantics, I got nothing to say to you.
well the game installs a kernel module without my consent. Isn't that the definition of a rootkit?
Did you install a game with anticheat? Did that anticheat require kernel level access? Can you read?
I'm just curious what part is them sneaking something onto your machine that you're unaware of?
I have no idea if the gamers installing it are "unaware" (I never played such a game), however it's still a shitty practice. The average Joe has no idea what the hell a rootkit is and it's predatory to exploit this. Also, no game should install rootkits. For the love of god, it's a videogame.
No game is installing rootkits, you guys just keep misusing the term, as I've attempted to explain like five fucking times in this thread.
The average joe clearly doesn't understand what a rootkit is, as you've well established.
most anticheats run in the kernel, even the most popular ones like battleye and vanguard.
also they are often installed automatically while launching games for the first time, without any prompts
yeah maybe just design proper authoritative servers instead?
anticheats are kinda a band-aid solution.
Or maybe bring back self hosted servers so you can roll your own
Viva la Gamespy!
slef hosted servers don't solve cheating on their own either.
proper authoritive server shouldn't send or accept any information that isn't strictly necessary, like positions of players that are in a completely different part of the map
"most people who had the rootkit installed on their machine dont know what a rootkit is anyways; why should I care?"
-sony's response
I STILL don't buy Sony shit because of that. They booby trapped their product and idiots still buy it. There are plenty of competitors who don't do that.
Or they just haven’t been caught yet.
It would be naive to think it’s a singular event.
Certainly not singular, but it's very difficult to get away with this undetected because the end user gets physical access to the hardware.
Linux is open source, and they had a malware for 10 years that was undetected.
Having access means nothing if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Rootkits are serious problems.
Wait, what malware was that?
Which one? There was the 2020 one by winnti group that attacked Linux servers for a decade, and another in 2021/22 called symbiote, but I don’t know how long that one was hidden for.