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A new chapter has been opened in the history of FPS Zhu Xian.

Recently, "Cross Fire" assisted the Huangpi District Branch of the Wuhan Municipal Public Security Bureau in successfully cracking the country's first DMA plug-in case. Currently, the four humanoid creatures who sold the plug-ins have all been arrested and are about to start an unforgettable sewing machine career.

The picture comes from the official WeChat account of Huangpi Public Security Bureau

During the same period, the official CF iron fist remained the same, and more than 40,000 "Ten-Year Agreements" were issued to the group of cheaters in a single week.

The game officials also punished a bunch of cheating users

Therefore, green players who have suffered from DMA celebrated the New Year in advance, and the newbies who have not yet figured out the value of this "first case" also raised new questions:

"Great! But what is DMA?"

High-tech crime

The history of the development of plug-ins is almost the history of suffering of FPS players, and DMA plug-ins are the latest episode in the top ten tortures of green players.

The full name of DMA is Direct memory access, which means "direct access to memory technology". It can directly read your memory data and modify this data through special software and hardware, thereby achieving cheating in the game.

The brief workflow is shown in the figure, which is from Hardware Engineer

Because FPS games focus on real-time and precise operations, most manufacturers will package more computing tasks on the local client rather than the official server in order to avoid network lag and other issues that affect the player experience. In this context, FPS plug-ins are mostly about tampering with local data, such as the WPE and memory plug-ins that were popular in the early years.

The DMA plug-in is the Pro version of these old predecessors - no more tedious downloading and installation is required, you only need to insert a board into the host computer to directly transcend the calamity and ascend to immortality.

The point of the OP here is that DMA technology can transfer player data to other devices for processing and display. It will not leave any plug-in files on the computer, nor will it leave any traces in the local terminal data.

For cheaters, they can bypass local detection methods more conveniently and safely to complete cheating.

For game officials and the police, it is also difficult to find evidence during the identification and evidence collection stages.

After all, you can catch a thief with dirty tricks. You can accuse me of cheating, but there is no trace on my computer. You can accuse me of committing a crime, but when you arrived, there was only a "board from nowhere" plugged into my computer, and I was "useless".

The picture shows one of the tools used by DMA plug-ins. DMA plug-ins require a series of supporting external hardware to achieve traceless operation.

At the same time, this type of DMA plug-in can also share the cheating function with the entire team. Ordinary players who accidentally team up with the plug-in may also be mistakenly banned because of sharing the cheating function, not to mention that some people use this method to read player account information, thereby stealing or even tampering with the data in the account, causing property losses.

Because of these "powerful" features, in the past period of time, there have been many comments in the industry that "DMA plug-ins cannot be controlled". Plug-in dealers will type "guaranteed not to be blocked" on the public screen, while the plug-in guys will have a look of "call the police if you are unhappy", and continue to make a lot of money from the continuous shortage of big virtues. Take this case as an example, the plug-in guys made nearly 2 million yuan in illegal income from it.

Faced with such arrogance, manufacturers will naturally not ignore it.

After all, the gaming environment has deteriorated and player accounts have been damaged, and these negative consequences will eventually lead to large-scale player withdrawals and a large number of negative reviews.

At the same time, anti-cheating itself requires a lot of manpower and technical investment. Some games' anti-cheating tools sometimes take up CPU and memory resources, thus affecting game performance and even causing problems such as the game being unable to start.

For manufacturers, the proliferation of plug-ins is harmful and has no benefits, and may even directly cost them their lives and property.

Don't have too many examples like this.

Therefore, after the emergence of DMA plug-ins, many manufacturers have been seeking effective ways to combat this new type of plug-in.

The successful resolution of this DMA case has undoubtedly given a boost to the anti-cheating cause.

According to the information released by the police, after a player who was planning to sell a cheat for 3,000 yuan that was "guaranteed not to be blocked" but was happy to receive a ten-year agreement reported the case, the police followed the clues and rushed to Wuxi, Liyang, Dongguan and other places and successively arrested a third-level DMA cheat sales gang. After the professional appraisal department determined that the DMA cheat was a destructive program, criminal coercive measures were taken against four suspects on suspicion of providing programs and tools for intrusion into and illegal control of computer information systems, and the investigation continued.

The picture comes from the report article of Huangpi Public Security Official WeChat Account

Finally, within just three months, the anti-cheating fighters ran through a systematic crackdown process that involved cooperation from game companies, police from multiple locations cooperating in investigations and arrests, expert identification, and accurate prosecution and conviction. The cheaters not only received a huge amount of turnover, but also received the corresponding Balizi package. This not only declared that another major bottleneck in the anti-cheating process had been broken through, but also marked another evolution in the official process of combating cheating.

However, the flag heralding victory often flies over muddy battlefields.

When people look back on this anti-cheating journey, it is not difficult to find that there is still a long way to go in this cause of protecting a fair gaming environment.

The tortuous road to reverse hanging

Ever since the global gaming industry ushered in the "Age of Discovery" of online games, the fight between cheating and anti-cheating has never stopped.

The earliest anti-cheating efforts started from the demand side, mainly with penalties - making players think about the consequences before cheating.

During this stage, even the game Cross Fire (CF), which is now very good at fighting against cheating, initially implemented account bans, with a focus on severe punishment: warnings and minor punishments for others, starting with ten years for CF, and up to permanent punishment.

On the one hand, this severe punishment is indeed effective. For quite a long time, the anti-cheating measures of "Cross Fire" have been well received among players. To this day, there are still many jokes about the awe of various cheaters for CF.

On the other hand, simply banning accounts does not solve the fundamental problem. After online games entered their golden age, various plug-ins in games became increasingly prevalent. Simply banning accounts not only has little effect, but will also bring trouble to the company. Mistaken bans are common, and many companies have been criticized by players for this.

At this time, the industry not only needs punitive measures such as account blocking, but also needs technical means to prevent and combat plug-ins.

From then on, many manufacturers began to focus on the application and development of anti-cheating systems in games. Tencent developed the well-known TP (TenProctec) security system at that time, and other manufacturers also developed their own or purchased mature systems on the market to strengthen their "cheat detection" capabilities. And protection measures such as account appeals and freezing were also launched in the following years.

The picture comes from the Internet. In those years, the TP system was almost the business card of Tencent Games.

As manufacturers continue to increase their efforts to combat cheating, criminals who make and sell cheats will naturally not sit still and wait for death. In order to cope with these security systems, cheating technology has been updated and iterated many times since then, from simple value modification tools in the early days to script-based cheating tools later on. Various cheating tools have also begun their own "industrial upgrades" and have gradually developed a complete criminal industry chain in the battles between manufacturers and players over the years.

Perhaps the manufacturers' own efforts alone are not enough to put out the wildfire of the rampant plug-ins.

Fortunately, as relevant laws and regulations such as digital property protection become increasingly complete, the police have gradually paid more attention to the field of plug-in crimes, and many game security teams have also begun to take the initiative to help the police crack down on plug-in crimes.

With the technical and information support of manufacturers, the scope of the police's crackdown has gradually expanded from making and selling cheats to the entire industry chain. Over the past few years, with the assistance of manufacturers, the police have successively arrested cheating gangs such as "Ocean Entertainment Community", "Shenlong" and "Strawberry Bear", and have achieved fruitful results.

Police arrested members of the "Strawberry Bear" cheating team

At the same time, the game officials are also paying more attention to the voice of the player community. For example, CF has used screenshots submitted by players to carry out targeted attacks on cheating users. CF officials have also been involved in popularizing the operating mechanisms of various plug-ins and cheating behaviors in various games, as well as the anti-cheating principles against these plug-ins, and have advocated improving players' ability to identify plug-ins and their awareness of prevention.

The picture comes from the official WeChat account of "CrossFire"

Finally, the anti-cheating actions over the years have accumulated deep technical accumulation and practical experience for many domestic manufacturers. For example, CF, which has been dealing with cheaters for many years, has gradually become a veteran warrior after many trials. Over the past few years, whether it is from TP to MTP, to ACE security system, or the continuous renovation of account protection system and reporting feedback process, the CF security team has a wealth of anti-cheating experience.

Thanks to this, after the emergence of new poisonous weeds such as DMA plug-ins and AI plug-ins, the game security team behind CF quickly established a special security team for new plug-ins, and collected massive amounts of hardware data within a few years, and updated the hardware library that can be used by its security system for plug-in detection.

At present, this measure has achieved initial results. Under the detection of the ACE system, more and more DMA plug-ins are being quickly locked and processed. In June last year, shortly after the new system was launched, the official banned more than 500 accounts.

Now the official is also continuously releasing cheating ban data, especially the recent data is almost all for new plug-ins

At the same time, the game officials have also increased the punishment for cheating users. For example, starting this year, CF officials have stipulated that accounts that use plug-ins to cheat in the game will be banned for ten years. The scope of punishment is also getting wider and wider. In the announcement of CF officials in November last year, 11 banned accounts were in the top 100 of the list in each region, and more than 100 accounts participated in live broadcast activities.

It can be said that as long as someone cheats, no matter if it is a professional player or a streamer, no one can escape the blame. The "zero tolerance" attitude towards cheating has become increasingly obvious.

CF has also added measures such as game interruption to curb cheating over the years.

However, no matter what, no matter how many relevant measures are taken, how advanced the technology is, and how great the efforts are, the road to anti-cheating is still long.

After all, there are always people who want to take shortcuts in FPS games, and there are even people who enjoy ruining other people's gaming experience. This is the source of cheating that is difficult to eradicate. Maybe a solution has been found for DMA cheats now, but there may be more toxic cheating technologies flowing into the player community in the future. The purpose of anti-cheating is not to eradicate evil, but to minimize the impact of cheats on ordinary players. This is the essence of the game between cheating and anti-cheating for many years.

In this game, no one can win alone, whether it is the manufacturer, the player or the official. A fair and healthy gaming environment requires everyone to protect it together.

At this point, I can't help but think of a point that the famous jurist Jhering argued in his book "Struggle for Rights": "Struggle for rights is an obligation for both individuals and society."

The same applies to the gaming industry. Fighting for the right to a fair gaming environment is the responsibility of everyone who has been harmed by cheats.