Company promises countermeasures against new DRM bypasses — zero-day game releases become norm as security concerns mount over hypervisor-based bypass

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[–] Encephalotrocity@feddit.online 47 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (7 children)

Good luck

Using the hypervisor bypass, even in its latest incarnation, requires users to disable:

Virtualization-Based Security (VBS): a layer that separates the Windows operating system from the its security enforcement features that run at a higher privilege level.

Credential Guard: a sub-feature of VBS that keeps login credentials in an container isolated from the rest of the operating system.

Driver Signature Enforcement: verification that any drivers installed in the system must have a digital signature issued by Microsoft to an identifiable company or developer, in order to prevent installing random drivers at the system level.

Core Isolation / Memory Integrity (HVCI): similar to the above, but prevents any kernel-level unsigned code entirely, as well as modifications to existing signed code so programs can't attempt to mess with existing drivers.

Installing a community-made hypervisor (HV) with Windows running on top of it. This HV fakes responses to the checks that Denuvo makes, and runs with higher permissions (ring level -1) than the operating system itself and has full, nearly untraceable access to hardware and software.

[–] dorumon@lemmy.cafe 1 points 4 minutes ago

Thanks for reminding me about why I have been exclusively playing older games or games from my backlog. Seriously with the prices of video games it's not worth it to buy them anymore let alone have the hardware to even play them. PC gaming sounds like a nightmare where you have to do all this crazy nonsense just to play some games at slightly better performance or if you are poor like me. I have long since stopped at pirating normal PC games though personally and have been pirating ROMs instead for emulators or buying from GOG. Much easier and you have like 4 decades worth of content just to play through. I say just let the modern gaming industry rot and toil. Play some Indie games instead like Deltarune or Silksong or I am your beast. Do anything but not support this dumb market of triple A games where they cost almost a hundred dollars now and require super computers hooked up to your actual computer to run.

[–] tacosanonymous@mander.xyz 2 points 39 minutes ago

100% this. If you find a nice, trusted source, you’ll play some really hard to get games.

But one mistake and your shit isn’t yours anymore.

[–] alakey@piefed.social 40 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

First 4 are disabled on unsupported systems anyway (4 is also sometimes disabled to squeeze out gaming performance), but 5 is scary as hell.

[–] upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Windows forcing users to have to pay extra for what should be default security features has always been an awful practice.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 hours ago

The only one of those that is locked behind a specific Windows instance is Credential Guard, which only works on Enterprise and Education because it has to do with auth tokens of the domain, not local windows login AFAIK

The rest are locked behind hardware features like TPM and UEFI settings like secure boot.

I hate Microslop as much as the next person, but they do actually try to push their security features on everyone because of the reputation they've had as the most insecure OS.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 1 points 3 hours ago

If the Russian Mafia can do it, theoretically so can you.

[–] lemmysmash@beehaw.org 18 points 5 hours ago

DRM, game launchers and generally 3/4 of modern software overall are a security threat anyway.

That said, the best solution for all this problems is to never buy, pirate or play any DRMed crap. Let them choke on their greedy tech.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 22 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t see how this is much worse than running Denuvo malware to begin with. I treat my windows gaming partition as a disposable DMZ anyway.

[–] upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 5 hours ago (5 children)

This seems like a bad faith argument, the crack is basically installing a rootkit in your system. Its fair to assume a lot of casual users will be as ignorant as you are about the security issues and not re-enable the features.

If you truly can't see why that might be worse then DRM installed in a game your a fool.

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 16 points 4 hours ago

If it's a question of installing a rootkit belonging to either the evil pirates who are closer to my kind of evil, or evil corporations who are literally destroying the internet, civilization, and the world in order to masturbate in their AI training gulags with my personal data? I'd choose to trust the pirates every time.

That said, if I have to install a rootkit from anyone to play a fucking game, I'm probably just not playing that fucking game.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 19 points 5 hours ago

Are you familiar with how denuvo works? It is also a literal root kit. Yes it doesn’t run on ring -1, but it is ring 0.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 8 points 5 hours ago

the crack is basically installing a rootkit in your system

As is denuvo.

[–] ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 7 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Well... Nothing new then.

https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/psa-eac-apex-legends-anti-cheat-vulnerability/7768

https://arxiv.org/html/2408.00500v1

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

Ok, I'll play the fool. Why is it worse? Is there some reason I should trust irdeto more than a guy in a hoodie?

[–] northernlights@lemmy.today 11 points 6 hours ago

WTH I've known HSMs easier to bypass. Just to prevent people from playing a game, it's ridiculous.

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 hours ago

Never tried, but what about nested vm's ? It should be possible to have a normal secure vm, with a 'compromised' hp/vm running microslop running. In theory I guess..

[–] overkrill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 hours ago

hard hitting journalist Thomas Shardware