Gabe Newell Responds On VAC Reports; “We do not care what porn sites you visit”

F

fluffydelusions

Member
Well, that was quite a surprise. Yesterday, a rumor surfaced claiming that Valve’s Anti Cheat system was collecting your browser history. A lot of people feared that Valve was spying on them, something that is obviously… how should I put it… ridiculous. Valve’s Gabe Newell felt the need to talk about this whole thing and made it crystal clear that they are not getting your browser history and that the company does not care what porn sites you visit.

Gabe claimed that VAC was doing its job and that it was not collecting the players’ browser history. Despite Valve’s policy of not talking about VAC, Gabe made an exception and shed some light on its functionality.

“VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache. If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers. The match was double checked on our servers and then that client was marked for a future ban. Less than a tenth of one percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned as a result.”

Gabe also said that VAC is so good and effective that hackers will desperately try to attack people’s trust in Valve and its Anti-Cheat system in order to benefit from it.

“There is also a social engineering side to cheating, which is to attack people’s trust in the system. If “Valve is evil – look they are tracking all of the websites you visit” is an idea that gets traction, then that is to the benefit of cheaters and cheat creators. VAC is inherently a scary looking piece of software, because it is trying to be obscure, it is going after code that is trying to attack it, and it is sneaky. For most cheat developers, social engineering might be a cheaper way to attack the system than continuing the code arms race, which means that there will be more Reddit posts trying to cast VAC in a sinister light.”

Gabe concluded that they are not sending your browsing history to Valve, that they do not care what porn sites you visit, and that Valve is not using its market success to go evil.
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http://www.dsogaming.com/news/valve...rts-we-do-not-care-what-porn-sites-you-visit/

Also (thanks Nabs):
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_and_trust/
 
Gabe also said that VAC is so good and effective that hackers will desperately try to attack people’s trust in Valve and its Anti-Cheat system in order to benefit from it.
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So basically if you don't like systems that monitor your internet usage, you must be a "hacker" who is trying "to attack people's trust in Valve?"
 
I appreciate that when Valve handles this kind of problem, they explicitly describe exactly what's going on under the hood. It leaves no wiggle room - he is either telling the truth or lying.

I will choose to think he is telling the truth.
 
terrisus said:
So basically if you don't like systems that monitor your internet usage, you must be a "hacker" who is trying "to attack people's trusty in Valve?"
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Did you even read the OP? There is no monitoring of internet usage, according to gaben at least.
 
VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache. If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers. The match was double checked on our servers and then that client was marked for a future ban. Less than a tenth of one percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned as a result.
Click to expand...

Eh, that sounds pretty straight forward.

Cheat versus trust is an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. New cheats are created all the time, detected, banned, and tweaked. This specific VAC test for this specific round of cheats was effective for 13 days, which is fairly typical. It is now no longer active as the cheat providers have worked around it by manipulating the DNS cache of their customers' client machines.
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And we're done!
 
Q&A
1) Do we send your browsing history to Valve? No.
2) Do we care what porn sites you visit? Oh, dear god, no. My brain just melted.
3) Is Valve using its market success to go evil? I don't think so, but you have to make the call if we are trustworthy. We try really hard to earn and keep your trust.
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/thread
 
I think it's hilarious that cheat creators need DRM to ensure that you've "legitimately purchased" their cheat.

Reminds me of "scene" assholes getting pissed off when someone steals their work or mis-attributes it.
 
_hekk05 said:
Did you even read the OP? There is no monitoring of internet usage, according to gaben at least.
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You misread what he said. There is but the only look for partial matches to known servers that cheaters need to connect to to enable their hacks.
 
So if VAC checks to see if you've talked to a DRM server before banning you, does that mean a pirated cheat is more effective than a legitimately purchased cheat?
 
So, you think you are too good for my porn, Gabe? My porn is not up to your standards? Well pardon me! I'll try to visit better sites so you then can care about my salacious browsing habits! Pfttt.
 
Gabe Newell don't care about virtual women. he got real ones

gabe-newell.jpg
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Well, unless someone can sniff some packets proving this is a lie... I'm pretty satisfied with that explanation. Unfortunately, admitting that this is how it works actually does make it easier for the people selling paid cheats to find ways to get around it.
 
There was an anti-cheat program back in the days of counter-strike and TFC, it was called "Paladin". Paladin was a banned program and it had something to do with privacy issues. It was a fine anti-cheat program and was damn near impossible to trick, it busted a lot of cheaters and then it was banned for use.

Now, from what I remember it was banned for privacy issues, but was it the same as VAC in terms of privacy?
 
For most cheat developers, social engineering might be a cheaper way to attack the system than continuing the code arms race, which means that there will be more Reddit posts trying to cast VAC in a sinister light.”
Click to expand...

What nonsense. People don't like all these secretive systems analysing private information on their PC. Implying that people bringing this sort of stuff to light are probably cheat developers is a shitty move, unless they have some data to prove this currently 100% unsubstantiated claim.
 
Gabe also said that VAC is so good and effective that hackers will desperately try to attack people’s trust in Valve and its Anti-Cheat system in order to benefit from it.
Click to expand...

HA

HAHA

is he serious? I actually believed the story up until that point. Should have stuck to that policy of not talking about VAC.

This is GAF, so most people won't care. Valve and Sony are untouchable on this site and can do no wrong..
 
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