John Romero

Outsmarting the System: What Game Cheaters Can Teach Us About Cyber Security

What if the best model for cybersecurity isn't from a bank, but from the war against video game cheaters?

Outsmarting the System: What Game Cheaters Can Teach Us About Cyber Security
#1about 3 minutes

The financial impact and common methods of game cheating

Cheating costs the gaming industry billions annually and drives away players, with common methods including aimbots, wallhacks, and memory modification.

#2about 3 minutes

How cheat developers operate like SaaS businesses

Sophisticated cheating operations function like enterprise-grade SaaS businesses with subscription models, customer support, and advanced software engineering.

#3about 3 minutes

The rise of AI in both cheating and detection

AI is now used to create superhuman cheat bots, which in turn requires defensive AI that uses behavioral analysis and anomaly detection to identify them.

#4about 2 minutes

Riot Games' Vanguard and kernel-level anti-cheat

Riot Games' Vanguard system operates at the kernel level of the operating system for deep system monitoring, but this invasive approach carries security risks.

#5about 1 minute

The escalating arms race of adversarial machine learning

Cheat developers use adversarial machine learning techniques to test and train their bots against detection systems, creating a continuous feedback loop of evasion.

#6about 2 minutes

The business risks and black market economies of cheating

The economic footprint of cheating includes black market economies for account boosting, money laundering through virtual currencies, and catastrophic damage to brand reputation.

#7about 3 minutes

Applying gaming anti-cheat lessons to cybersecurity

Techniques like behavioral baselining, anomaly detection, and real-time data streaming used in gaming can be applied to detect fraud and insider threats in other industries.

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