Valve's latest updates to its anti-cheat (Valve Anti-Cheat, or VAC) has undergone some semi-public testing. The results are interesting to say the least. Instead of updating the anti-cheat on a per-wallhack basis, Valve is taking an HLGuard approach by attempting to make wallhacks fairly useless.
The block takes about half a second to kick in. You can see the person through the walls temporarily (first pic), but soon they're blocked by the anti-cheat (second). "It's an occlusion fix," says Erik Johnson of Valve. I was fishing for an interesting quote, but there you go.[break="click for more info"]I had the chance to test the update with the latest OGC wallhack (obviously how I got those pics) and let me tell you that it severely limits what the wallhack can do. I was, however, able to see CTs who were trying to rush me because the block takes a bit of time. It's a very good first step, and another hint that Valve is paradigm-independent when it comes to the anti-cheat (so far we've seen cvar detection, cheat detection, and, now, cheat prevention).
No word on when this update will be released publicly (obviously via an automatic upgrade to the anti-cheat module). It does have at least one bug, seeing the player/world models while in first person mode, so I predict that it's at least a week off. This may be, however, very early research into a much more in-depth system ala HLGuard.
Thanks to Erik and Eric from Valve for letting me test.
The block takes about half a second to kick in. You can see the person through the walls temporarily (first pic), but soon they're blocked by the anti-cheat (second). "It's an occlusion fix," says Erik Johnson of Valve. I was fishing for an interesting quote, but there you go.[break="click for more info"]I had the chance to test the update with the latest OGC wallhack (obviously how I got those pics) and let me tell you that it severely limits what the wallhack can do. I was, however, able to see CTs who were trying to rush me because the block takes a bit of time. It's a very good first step, and another hint that Valve is paradigm-independent when it comes to the anti-cheat (so far we've seen cvar detection, cheat detection, and, now, cheat prevention).
No word on when this update will be released publicly (obviously via an automatic upgrade to the anti-cheat module). It does have at least one bug, seeing the player/world models while in first person mode, so I predict that it's at least a week off. This may be, however, very early research into a much more in-depth system ala HLGuard.
Thanks to Erik and Eric from Valve for letting me test.
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