Another Reason to Avoid Steam: Valve Anti Cheat System

[Astronomer]

"if a recent report is to be believed, Valve is looking at your browsing history. Reportedly, the company's Valve Anti Cheat system (VAC) looks at all the domains you have visited, and if it finds that you've frequented hack sites, you'll be banned. 'The new functionality has been slammed by gamers, who claim it is "more like spyware than anti-cheat". Valve has not responded to the allegations, but all Steam users have agreed to abide by specific online conduct and not to use cheats. The company's privacy policy also explains that Valve may collect "personally identifiable information", but promises not to share it with other parties.'"

 

From the linked article:

 

"The thing is, the DNS cache stores details of every site your computer has touched, whether or not you've actively visited it. If an article you are reading links to a blacklisted site, your DNS will record the address of that site, as well as the article. More subtly - if a page you are reading is using a graphic hosted on a blacklisted site, then that blacklisted site will again show up in your DNS. Even if you've never actively visited a cheat website, there may be traces of them in your DNS, and that's what VAC is reportedly now looking for.

The news was first posted to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Reddit, explaining that VAC now:

• Goes through all your DNS Cache entries (ipconfig /displaydns)
• Hashes each one with MD5
• Reports back to VAC Servers"

You can flush your cache via the following procedures. I'd recommend doing so before you launch a Steam game.

 

Windows® 8

 

1. Press Win+X to open the WinX Menu.
2. Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator. (for Windows 8.1, click on "Command Prompt (Admin)"
3. Type the following command and press Enter: ipconfig /flushdns
4. If the command was successful, you will see the following message:

   Windows IP configuration successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

 

Windows 7

 

1. Click the Start button.
2. Enter cmd in the Start menu search field.
3. Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator.
4. Type the following command and press Enter: ipconfig /flushdns
5. If the command was successful, you will see the following message:

   Windows IP configuration successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

 

Windows XP, 2000, or Vista®

 

1. Click the Start button.
2. On the Start menu, click Run....
   • If you do not see the Run command in Vista, enter run in the Search bar.
3. Type the following command in the Run text box: ipconfig /flushdns

 

MacOS® 10.7 and 10.8

 

1. Click Applications.
2. Click Utilities.
3. Double-click the Terminal application.
4. Type the following command:

   sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

   Warning: To run this command, you will need to know the computer's Admin account password.

 

MacOS 10.5 and 10.6

 

1. Click Applications.
2. Click Utilities.
3. Double-click the Terminal application.
4. Type the following command: sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

Edited February 17, 2014 by Astronomer

[Sonovabich]

Well if you want to play any new games that are out or coming out in the future you can't really avoid Steam at all, so i will stick with it.

[Astronomer]

Just be sure to flush your DNS cache before you play a game.

[Sonovabich]

Just be sure to flush your DNS cache before you play a game.

How do i do that

[Astronomer]

Read my original post. At the bottom I posted info on how to do that for several versions of Windows and Mac OS X

[eidolonFIRE]

isn't that bordering on invasion of privacy?

 

I'm all for effective anti-cheating but just because you visited a site doesn't mean that you cheat in game. That "evidence" doesn't logically support the crime.

Edited February 17, 2014 by eidolonFIRE

[Sitting-Duc]

isn't that bordering on invasion of privacy?

 

I'm all for effective anti-cheating but just because you visited a site doesn't mean that you cheat in game. That "evidence" doesn't logically support the crime.

 

I would imagine that they would have a scoring system that weights accessed URL's and if the score hits a limit then the ban is placed. There are no details posted of how Valve is using the DNS information and therefore I wouldn't think to much of it. 

 

As for the invasion of privacy comment. That's the point of anti-cheats - they expressly say that they will be scanning aspects of your computer, that is how they are able to detect hacks.

 

[ChknFngr]

Fak em i dont need no corporation cop to look at my browser history !FU Valve

[eidolonFIRE]

I would imagine that they would have a scoring system that weights accessed URL's and if the score hits a limit then the ban is placed. There are no details posted of how Valve is using the DNS information and therefore I wouldn't think to much of it. 

 

As for the invasion of privacy comment. That's the point of anti-cheats - they expressly say that they will be scanning aspects of your computer, that is how they are able to detect hacks.

 

 

Ah well... I guess it's the one big downside of PC gaming... cheaters. Do what you gotta do I guess.

[TecHnOBoY]

Valve has no effort from reading your DNS history. What should they do with this data? All they can see is the website names I visited. And their IP addresses. And now I should execute a /flushdns every time before I start Steam?

 

I guess they do exact one thing:

Searching for suspicious websites. I can imagine chat they have an internal score for each player.

 

Watch your profile and you will find the "VAC status".

 

All they could do is to use this data for in game advertising. (Was planned for Counter Strike years ago)

 

I see many blogs complaining about this but no serious website. (Until now). But that the integrated web browser (Chrome) is totally outdated doesn't matter? It's not possible to secure it by deactivating java or flash, no option to deactivate cookies? That's what makes me nervous, not a scan of my DNS cache.

 

Most of the bloggers who are complaining about this - I guess - use

 

- Facebook

Recently removed the option to decide who can find you or send you friend invites and messages. To make the social part more user friendly. Of course. Another example:

Do you have an Android mobile? Install the Facebook app and read the requested permissions carefull. They could also ask for root access to your mobile.

 

- Google Chrome

(Yes, the most secure browser atm, but they don't do it just because they want to make the digital world better)

 

- an iPhone

Apple redirects a lot of your HTTP traffic through caching proxies. To compress the data and so on. Of course, they do. And they have access to everything you read on the web. Not only the top level domain. Each website link, article, picture..

 

- an Android phone

Just one word: Google.

 

 

They all collect much more sensitive data (and make money with it - mostly) than Valve does by accessing your DNS cache. Again: All they can see is the top level (hxxp://google.com) or sub domain (hxxp://play.google.com) you visited. And the IP addresses. That's all.

Edited February 17, 2014 by TecHnOBoY

[eidolonFIRE]

Aint no such thing as cyber privacy these days lol.

[iEvil]

People that dont hack or cheat really dont visit sites that apply hacks. So if u dont visit the sites, you have nothing to worry about. (in good status with VAC since 2004)

[Sammy]

I highly doubt this. Otherwise Microsoft would add into windows a shut down code if you visit any website from one of their competitors.

[ChknFngr]

People that dont hack or cheat really dont visit sites that apply hacks. So if u dont visit the sites, you have nothing to worry about. (in good status with VAC since 2004)

because we dont visit hack websites doesnt mean we like to have our privacy violated, and u shouldnt agree to that except if u love 1984 style of society.

[KaptCrunch]

hostile AI software 

 

weird that steam won't open when origin is open, I noticed today  after reading this post

[DEEJAYKEG]

F**k Steam!

[Sitting-Duc]

Again, I will point out that your privacy is NOT being violated. You are actively going out and purchasing a game where it is made known that an anti-cheat program will be operational. It is a condition of most games that you have to run an anti-cheat to access the multiplayer part.

 

[7Toes]

need to post this to some hackers sites see if they can take down valve for a few days lol or more 

[ChknFngr]

My privacy IS VIOLATED when someone i dont know, from a corporation i sometimes play games from, is looking at what im doing OUTSIDE of that FKN GAME.

PERIOD.

[Sitting-Duc]

That's the point of hacks though... they are external programs outside of the game.. (not all hacks).

 

[ChknFngr]

programs not browser history.

totally different.

and even programs, they shouldnt be allowed to look at any program u may use or not.

they should just look if u run hacking programs, thats all.

[Sammy]

It is similar to various games that didnt work if you have an installed program used to mount disk images. The idea of installing a piece of anti-cheat that utilizes someone elses product to do whatver is generally frowned upon.

[TheCheeseyCrusader]

All hail valve

[TecHnOBoY]

programs not browser history.

totally different.

and even programs, they shouldnt be allowed to look at any program u may use or not.

they should just look if u run hacking programs, thats all.

The DNS cache is not your browser history. Your browser history contains complete URLs of visited websites, your DNS cache contains only the Domain and IP addresses.

[Sitting-Duc]

programs not browser history.

totally different.

and even programs, they shouldnt be allowed to look at any program u may use or not.

they should just look if u run hacking programs, thats all.

 

As @@TecHnOBoY has said, we are talking about DNS records not browsing history they are totally different.

 

How is a program supposed to look to see if you have a hack related program installed if they cannot look at all the programs installed? Take the following code for example, this will loop through all of the programs that you would see in the control panel. If you are looking for a 'hack' you may do similar. 

string registry_key = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";
using(Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(registry_key))
{
    foreach(string subkey_name in key.GetSubKeyNames())
    {
        using(RegistryKey subkey = key.OpenSubKey(subkey_name))
        {
            Console.WriteLine(subkey.GetValue("DisplayName"));
            //This is where you would be checking for a hack program. But to get here you have to retrieve all of the installed programs.
        }
    }
}

Ok for the more code savvy you could say that you could have an object array of all the known hack programs and then do an individual call into the registry for each, but that would just stall the host computer.

 

This concept is the same for most things that anti-cheat programs do, when they go into your RAM they are most likely searching all of it for set patterns - they will focus on memory areas that are linked to graphics, DirectX and the games more than other parts but that doesn't mean that they won't at some point read it all.

 

So really there is no way to do it like you say without it making the anti-cheat program useless. If an anti-cheat program was set to look in specific areas and forced to use bad programming techniques to do it, well some may be happy that their privacy is intact but there would be more hackers due to its inefficiency and the anti-cheat program would stall more often.

 

My two pennies.