Apex Legends streamers surprised to find aimbot and other hacks added to their PCs in the middle of major competition via anti-cheat software
Wow it finally happened. So glad I switched to steam running on linux mint last week. I refused to install helldivers because it wanted to install some no holds barred god level permissions anti-cheat software. Windows 11 was the last straw for me. Good times..
The volunteers at the Anti-Cheat Police Department have since issued a PSA announcing, "There is currently an RCE exploit being abused in [Apex Legends]" and that it could be delivered via from the game itself, or its anti-cheat protection. "I would advise against playing any games protected by EAC or any EA titles", they went on to say.
As for players of the tournament, they strongly recommended taking protective measures. "It is advisable that you change your Discord passwords and ensure that your emails are secure. also enable MFA for all your accounts if you have not done it yet", they said, "perform a clean OS reinstall as soon as possible. Do not take any chances with your personal information, your PC may have been exposed to a rootkit or other malicious software that could cause further damage."
"The rootkit you installed on your pc allowed a rootkit or other malicious software to be installed on your PC."
"But, it stopped little Aimbot Andrew from successfully using the xProAimb0t2024 program he spent his monthly allowance on! Never mind the rest; it's working as intended. Closed as WONTFIX."
– Anticheat developers
Fyi, it's "no holds barred" as in no type of hold is disallowed. "no holes barred" is a decidedly different sort of event
As a nevernude I prefer no holes bared
No holes Bard.
Username. Um, checks out.
But then you also need to cover your face
Yeah, the "hole bars" are the ones you wanna go if you're trying to get lucky in the back if you know what I mean ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I thought hole bars were the things you see in JAV or manga
Any bar is a hole bar if you're willing to make a hole and find the right people.
Point taken, grammar updated, but.... since we are talking about basically opening your OS up to anything EA might enjoy doing to it, maybe this is a rare occasion where the mistake fits the context? Just sayin...
it sounds a bit sus
Can you tell me where that kind of event is held so I can avoid it?
The real cheats are the proprietary software we installed along the way.
leopards.exe has eaten your face and will continue.
[OK] [Yes] [I deserve it]
Hacking aside it is funny to me that the anti-cheat made it possible to enable cheats.
There is currently no evidence of an RCE exploit in EAC, and EAC themselves as well as their owner, Epic, have both denied the existence of an RCE in their software.
There's a video from about a month ago in which ImperialHal and Genburten (on separate occasions) are in a match against the person named in the messages sent by the exploit on Genburten's machine.
It's possible that they were in contact with the hacker after that point and that he tricked them into downloading something they shouldn't have.
Otherwise, it's also possible that there is an exploit in Apex/Source that the hacker used. He may have been able to get their IP during the public match a month ago and then use it to target them during the competition.
Beyond what was seen during the competition, the hacker was also able to gift thousands of Apex packs to several players (seemingly without paying for them) and was able to get 40+ "bot" players into a single match and to all target an individual player. He also claimed to be able to open crates on another player's account. These other exploits seem to indicate that he has elevated access to both the server and to multiple APIs, but none of them indicate elevated access to user machines in general.
Cancel my comment about this being a possible 0day or whatever. They were playing this tournament on their personal systems, which makes it way easier for someone to accidentally download malicious software without players' consent.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
a video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The missing context here (not your fault, i think people reporting this are being misleading) is that they were using their personal systems in this tournament. That means whatever dodgy software they've installed can't be monitored in a controlled environment, and claims of it being EAC's fault is unfounded.
A proper tournament would have controlled hardware and software, even if playing remotely at a professional level. You can't guarantee these systems haven't been tampered with, even if the players insist on proper security measures.
The clips of the hacks being installed/activated are pretty crazy:
Note that the title has been edited: we do NOT know if this was EAC yet. The article says it "may have been." EAC has claimed it wasn't them (but of course they're going to claim that). Instead, it could have been Apex's source engine. Or, it could have been two individually compromised machines from software completely unrelated to Apex; remember, these are two high-profile targets, after all. We just have to wait and see what the real cause was. Regardless, I wouldn't play Apex for at least the next day or two, just to be safe.
I'm not in the community at all, but I have to respect how these players reacted to getting hacked. I'm sure it was devastating to have their tournament run ruined in that way.
Is there any actual evidence that this was done via an EAC exploit?
These could be two spear phished players with hacked PCs. (2 of the best and biggest audiences making them ideal targets). People have also mentioned r5 potentially being a culprit.
If this was eac related or even a bigger client side hack (RCE), you'd think it'd be more wide spread.
I wish the reporting on this was better all around. At this point I've seen no actual evidence of anything supporting RCE or that it was EAC to blame.
An EAC RCE 0-day would be worth a lot of money to nation states or organized crime.
That was a strange path my mind took as I read the title, thinking it was a satire piece about competitors trying to sneak in cheats... Like, the "Anti-Cheat Police Department" couldn't be anything but a laughingstock.
Doesn't EAC work on Linux?
googles
It sounds like it has for two years:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2022/03/01/apex-legends-now-works-on-linux-with-official-eac-support/
I mean, I use Linux myself. But I don't know if Linux is a fix for "game I use may have vulnerabilities".
In theory, maybe Linux/Steam could isolate individual games (might be further along with Wayland than Windows is), but that's not how things work today. If you install software from Steam, it's got access to act as you, and if it has vulnerabilities that permit for remote compromise, then you'd be vulnerable as well.
Under linux EAC runs as your normal user, so it can't install system-wide malware but it can read/write your personal data. If you create a dedicated user for gaming you should be safe from this kind of stuff.
What about on Windows? I assumed it would work similarly on there too, even if Windows has a different privilege escalation system to Linux.
On Windows, EAC runs at the kernel level and basically has full access to everything about your system. It only works on linux because newer linux kernels support emulating system calls in user-space (this might not be 100% accurate, but it's the general idea).
Sounds fanciful.
EAC doesn't open up ports into your network as far as I'm aware.
Pretty much the only way to do RCE in games with no direct P2P connection is to send malformed data to the server, and then it sends that to the other clients, relying on things not being checked in two places. We've seen this a few times, in Dark Souls series and GTA Online.
I can't see for the life of me how EAC would cause that.
It’s very likely not EAC that’s the problem. Best guess is the hacker has some kind of server side access, be it allowing unsigned/unauthorized operations to be executed from a client or having access to the servers themselves via rce
So what's going on? These players all had cheats loaded and this is the excuse they came up with when it was detected on their systems? Cheats are pretty rampant, but they've mostly shifted to people using external hardware like XIM or Chronos to bypass cheat detection and abuse the Aim Assist function. It's blatantly obvious in competitive games, especially first-person shooters. Ah well, get gud kid. Learn how to aim.
In another thread for this, someone posted links to streams of the players when it happens. They immediately notice and adjust their playstyle to avoid the cheat (one guy with wall hack leaves the game, another guy with aim bot stops shooting anything). It wasn't a case of "game detects cheating and player tries to explain after the fact", but "cheat suddenly and obviously enabled, player announces it immediately in voice chat and team advises to leave".
Considering it's two high profile players, I'd say the most likely is that they were tricked into downloading something, or some other software they were using had an exploit (I've had one from a browser plugin before now). There's a video elsewhere in this thread of one of them downloading Malwarebytes for something, so maybe they didn't manage to get rid of whatever it was.
Other option is an exploit on the server. Maybe there's some way of sending malformed data to a player you're not currently in a game with to exploit an RCE. It's not completely impossible, but I figure we'd see it a lot more if that was the case.
I'd put money on option 1 though.
No but the game code does. And that game code also interacts with EAC. You can argue it's a bug in Apex Legends, and it would be that too, but the fact is that EAC shouldn't be executing arbitrary commands based on what the game code has given it, so if that possibility exists in EAC, it is still an RCE in Apex Legends and a kernel privilege escalation flaw in EAC.
Is Helldiver's anti cheat that bad too? am I at least a little better off running the game through Proton on Linux or am I just providing a compatibility layer to a rootkit?
Wait who TF is cheating in HD? It's pve?
You would be surprised who will cheat. Watch Karl Jobst and some of the cheaters he has made vids on
Some people might still want to be seen as the bestest Helldiver evar.
The latter
Doesn't the compatibility layer mean its restricted to its own wine prefix? Or am I misunderstanding?
In theory. However, wine was not designed as a security sandbox, and it might be possible (or even trivial) for something to intentionally break out of it. This gets more likely when considering the growing market share of linux.
There isn't much sandboxing in Wine, but at least on linux, the AC is forced to run in userspace (instead of having root privileges). So it's not quite as invasive, but it still has access to everything your non-root account has access to. Which is still a lot. Probably not much better from a privacy perspective, but at least a little better from a security perspective.
You could theoretically get around this issue by installing Steam via Flatpak so that everything is sandboxed though.
I do not buy this RCE in Apex/EAC rumor. This wouldn't be the first time "pro" gamers got caught with cheats. And, I wouldn't put it past the cheat developers to not only include trojan-like remote-control into their cheats, but use it to advertise their product during a streamed tournament. All press is good press. And honestly, they'd probably want people thinking it was a vulnerability in Apex/EAC rather than a trojan included with their cheat.
Mmmm I’ve not done any digging, but the likelihood of a large number of streamers all using cheating software and a large number of them literally announcing it and leaving the game is quite slim.
Think of it this way, assuming they were cheating, the streamers would not want to get caught right? So they would be using cheats that aren’t being broadcast over their streaming software. To then announce “oh no I’m cheating” and quit would be silly, what would be the point of this even joining the tournament at that point? On the other hand, if the cheats were visible on their streams… that seems like a glaring issue a streamer wouldn’t make, never mind a large number of them.
I think their hypothesis is that the streamers had installed and used cheats outside of the tournament and that the cheat suppliers enabled them remotely to advertise on the big stream.
Doubtful. Unless the cheats popped up and said “buy cheats at [cheat website]” then it’s not even really advertising. They’d also be shooting themselves in the foot by showing their cheats are remotely controlled.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe it’s possible. But it’s much more likely that a “fuck you” hack was pulled, rather than the majority of streamers all cheating by coincidence.
These 2 pros have performed at lan multiple times and the type of cheats used would have been immediately noticed on any stream.
The hacker (destroyer2009) also gifted in excess of $8k worth of lootboxes to multiple streamers, suggesting that they have access to some remote APIs they shouldn’t.
On top of that a few months ago there was a widespread issue with top players being targeted in lobbies where they’d drop and then 57 bots would drop and zombie rush, all named the same thing and controlled by some kind of rudimentary script.
Pretty much everything together has ruled out the possibility of either of the players involved being the ones who are purposefully cheating.
I'm not saying they were purposefully cheating in this or any tournament, and I agree cheating under that context would be totally obvious. But, it is feasible that a pro worried about their stats might be willing to cheat in situations where the stakes are lower outside of tournaments.
What I also don't understand is, if this hacker has lobby wide access, why was it only these two people who got compromised? Why wouldn't the hacker just do the entire lobby? Clearly this hacker loves the clout. Forcing cheats on the entire lobby would certainly be more impressive.
PS. This is all blatant speculation. From all sides. No one, other than the hacker and hopefully Apex really knows what happened. I am mostly frustrated by ACPD's immediate fear mongering of a RCE in EAC or Apex based on no concrete evidence.
They probably didn't randomly guess what happened. There would be pretty obvious clues as to how it happened. The network traffic for tournaments like this is monitored. Because they have to be done online. If they had no idea what actually happened, they would have at least been suspicious of the players at first. No matter what messages were playing in chat at the time.
This isn't a statement from Apex or EAC. The original source for the RCE claim is the "Anti-Cheat Police Department" which appears to just be a twitter community. There is absolutely no way Apex would turn over network traffic logs to a twitter community, who knows what kind of sensitive information could be in that. At best, ACPD is taking the players at their word that the cheats magically showed up on their computers.
PS. Apparently there have been multiple RCE vulnerabilities in the Source Engine over the years. So, I’m keeping my mind open.
There is an RCE exploit in EAC which has been confirmed by their twitter account; but they didn't confirm of it being exploited anywhere.
My belief is that the people responsible into it hacked these people months ago; as a few months ago the same hacker did attack ImperialHal while on stream with botted zombie accounts that follow him to kill him. On that stream's highlights all those bots were named (number)destroyer2009fan; which is the same as the person that spammed the chat at the time of the hack.
This is not an advertisement for cheats. Searching the hacker's name in cheat forums doesn't point to any specific program. I suspect that this is openly calling out Respawn to fix their anticheat, which has been a laughing stock.
really? because all I've seen was them saying the exact opposite: https://twitter.com/TeddyEAC/status/1769725032047972566
Afaik nothing has been confirmed besides that tweet from EAC
The tweet says they've seen the reports of a potential RCE, if they acknowledge this that pretty much means there is something that could achieve it. (or am i reading into it incorrectly?)
But they also state that this hasn't been exploited.
sadly it's been posted to Xitter, but I enjoy this 5 second clip of ImperialHal (one of the affected players):
https://twitter.com/babyducksss/status/1769541847829913925
yeah, totally not a compromised PC
There's something deeply worrying about the fact that especially here on Lemmy people are so acutely aware of the audience they're speaking to that we need to preface our messages with "I'm really on your side on this issue BUT.." because we know how easy it is to say the wrong thing and then be mobbed for it.
One shouldn't have to worry about any of that. Especially on anonymous internet forum. If someone comes at you for posting a twitter link then that's their issue, not yours.
I mean, I despise Twitter myself and wish I didn't drive traffic to their website, but this clip is just too good not to share.
By number of users, Lemmy is the worst forum for mobbing I've ever come across. You'd get similar mobbing on Reddit but there were 500x the number of users.
I assume it's because a mass of people came here for a staunchly idealistic reason simply because it was the alternative to reddit.
Also that the people who don't care about that kind of thing wouldn't have bothered moving from Reddit in the first place, or be bothered enough to interact with the post.
These words must be prefixed by long winded legal conditions to ever be used in any conversation on any topic ever:
Woman.
Trans.
Gay.
These words are HARAM, and can not be used unless you are one or more of them.
Fucking social calvinism.
Edit: like clockwork, here they come
This clip is him installing Malwarebytes, after the hacking/cheating incident happened
lmfao I thought these matches were being played in person with controlled hardware???? yeah they deffo just installed malware
edit: yeah even if this is him installing malwarebytes, im sorry but you cannot guarantee these guys dont have compromised PCs just because they're streamers.
So about those holes... We gonna bar them?
No, put your bar in my holes
Were gonna go all in for a no holds barred hole barring
So, lemme get this straight: allowing remote parties to install malware (DRM) on your system results in allowing remote parties to install malware on your system? Wow, who could have known! Certainly not the distributors of the step-one malware, am I right?
I'm certain there's a couple of lessons to be learned here (install and run games as normal, non-elevated users, people! It's easy to do on Linux) but I'm also somehow certain Big Corpos are going to stick their heads into the sand regarding such lessons.
Oh well, the pirate way it is.
I imagine their surprise came across kind of like this
“what is this? I bought a xbox card! what is this? i don’t even know what that is!”
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
kind of like this
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Easy. I specifically blocked all titles with the tags "EA" and "EA Play" on Steam. Never have to worry about it.
Apparently the "easy" in EAC means easy like when you call a woman easy...
It ain't easy being sleazy.
There's a super interesting video by PirateSoftware on YouTube about this too.
Hahahaha fuck them enabling customers.
Apex runs on Linux though
So does the TiVo