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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • 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.


  • 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?



  • Then the cmos battery is probably in a Dallas DS1287 or similar chip. There are hacks to replace the battery itself with a CR2032 holder, but it requires drilling into the chip.

    I bought a DS12887+ to replace it, and socketed it in case it would need replacement again in the future (in another 30 years? :)). But if you want to go this route look up what chip is compatible with the exact one you have.


  • No, the reason it doesn’t work is that IDE to USB adapters don’t support pre-LBA HDDs. These old disks are all CHS-addressed.

    I wanted to take images of such disks. I ended up managing to boot an ancient version of Knoppix from a CD (just booting it was a nightmare) and then using dd_rescue to clone it to a file on a CF card connected vi a CF-to-IDE adapter.

    Edit: oh, drive powers off when usb is connected? Might be that the adapter doesn’t offer enough power, but if you could get around this you would inevitably run into the problem I describe above.