Sigh... anti-cheat program security concerns.

[Zathrus~SPARTA~]

Hello all,

 

Today... Planetside2 has initiated use of "Battleye Anti-Cheat". Battleye is used by several big games for anti-cheat.

 

I have some big security concerns for Battleye due to some major differences between it and most anti-cheat systems as follows:

 

Because Battleye is a third party program, and hackers have figured out how to hide cheats inside kernal's, the code in Battleye has admin access to the entire computer system. It can upload and execute any code to your PC... not just things relative to the game it is monitoring. It has full admin access to your entire system. Battleye while it is there to prevent cheats in your game, is monitoring and can alter your entire system at will.

 

I have pointed out to them... that the fact another game got hacked, and as a result of a "bad mistake in their architecture", the hackers were able to extract the battleye program for analysis from that game server. This recent historical event does not breed confidence. Thankfully the hackers did NOT get their source code. But hackers did get the program for analysis during that event due to a "mistake on their part" and that is very troubling.

 

I asked if they could somehow put my security concerns to rest.

 

They responded:

 

They understand my security concerns.

that yes, Battleye is capable of executing any code on any system it is on, but they put security measures in place to prevent just anyone from doing that.

They acknowledged there is some risk to that, but feel it is a necessary risk to fight hackers. They asked me to to trust them... but that do understand my concern with their program.

 

Since historically as far as I know... every "good program" in the past that had an Admin back door access to an entire system eventually got exploited by bad people.

That will eventually happen to battleye as the population of PC's with it installed continues to grow making them a larger and larger target.

 

So now... I must decide if catching hackers and therefore allowing this potential huge security hole on my system worth playing PS2?