A little about cheating in shooters: what are "cheats"

A recent post about how Valve trains AI to detect cheaters in CS:GO , as well as user questions, made me think that such a post might be interesting to get acquainted with some aspects of cheating and cheat functionality. It never occurred to me to write an article about this, since I have nothing to do with programming, and generally work in a different field. However, I considered this topic interesting enough to tell about it in more detail.

For the average user, "cheats" are some mythical means to win in a multiplayer game, and any cheat is "aim and in", but not many people know what it actually is and what they can do.

Almost all of you have heard the words that are sometimes heard in games: “aimbot”, “triggerbot”, “offny in”, “he has NoRecoil, throw a report”. At the same time, people do not always know what it is, how it works, and in general, cheats, in the minds of some, are some kind of mythical skill improver with which you break everything around and do not burn. Something that you can "download and go bend over." This is not entirely true, and I will try to talk about this in this article.

So, in this publication we will consider:

- Classification of cheats and methods of distribution (public, paid cheat from a cheat provider, private, custom);

- Cheats functionality: what is aimbot, triggerbot, esp, spinhack, ragehack, as well as settings;

— How cheats were used, on the example of CS:GO (some phenomena of the cheat scene);

— How to play against a cheater, using CS:GO as an example;

And also some popular misconceptions.

Perhaps, after reading this article, you will know exactly what to blame for those who follow you through the wall, but do not know how to shoot; or wild one-shots of players who have 15 hours on their account.

Disclaimer 1: In order not to spread this infection, I will try to avoid the names of specific cheats. The topic is full of nuances that I will try to touch on, but in many places I had to come up with simplifications, because different providers have different functions under different names, with different settings and different implementations. Therefore, when seeing simplifications, do not forget that they are made in order to omit unnecessary details.

Disclaimer 2: I'm not a cheater, I'm not associated with cheats and I don't play with them. I wholeheartedly support punishments for cheaters, up to the ones that Valve used (bans on main accounts, with skins worth 3-5k+ euros), and I dream that cheating would be impossible in games.

Disclaimer 3:The publication will not contain various behind-the-scenes dramas, of which there is quite a bit - ratting, leaking / buying / stealing sources, copy-pasted cheats that are promoted under different names, pouring mud at each other on the forums, leaking cheats to Valve / PB / somewhere else, or when a cheat is done solely to make money and then disappear from the stage after the first wave of bans. This is undoubtedly interesting to a certain circle of people, but the purpose of the publication is different, namely, to tell what the mythical "aim and vh" is.

Cheat classification

There are 4 classes for the end user:

1. Public/public.

Price: €0

What:This cheat can be anything from an implemented proof-of-concept that is detected, to an attempt to write a full-fledged cheat while practicing your skills. The cheat does not claim to have rich functionality or constant support, but it may not be detected for some time. It quickly becomes [Detected]. They don’t take money for them, but you get the corresponding functionality (sometimes it’s not bad for a free cheat, but it doesn’t reach the paid ones). Do not count on permanent support or the absence of detections. Such cheats are practically not used, except for the sake of draining accounts, or if you bought a pack of hacked accounts, and paying for a subscription is a pity for money. They are banned quickly, often have poor settings and are intended only for a “full undercut”, which is still not as strong as paid cheats.

Sometimes they are downloaded by schoolchildren, or people who do not even know about the existence of paid cheats. And they crash pretty quickly. Basically it's a cheat to "squeeze 10 minutes", after which you get banned or get Untrusted in CS:GO.

How it is delivered to the client's computer: This cheat is in the public domain and is distributed through cheat forums. They can be downloaded directly from there, sometimes even without registration. They almost always do not have a client or a secure method of delivery to the user (i.e. what you download is injected. Sometimes there is a dll file nearby that needs to be injected.).

An example of how a public cheat is distributed

2. Paid cheat from a cheat provider / pay2cheat, paycheat, p2c, payhack, subscription hack/cheat, and various slang variations. Most often they are called private, which is not entirely true.

Price: €2.99-€70+ per month, with discounts for 3/6/9/12 month purchases.

What: This cheat is distributed by the so-called "provider", and is commercial. The developer(s) are interested in the fact that the cheat is not detected, and most often they succeed. However, it is never known when it will be detected, so buyers play at their own risk. Some cheats were not detected for several years, but then Valve sharply bent the cheat, and a whole bunch of accounts. And often, even the basics, with content worth many thousands of euros.

It can cost from a couple of euros (if the cheat is of low quality) up to 25-30 euros per month. The latter most often has very rich functionality, has a lot of settings and configs, and depending on the reputation and positioning, it can be very strong. As in the case of Hack vs Hack games (more on what it is later), as well as for the “no-finger” game and andetekt.

If a cheat is more expensive than 25 euros, this does not mean that it is “cool” in any way, it can simply be positioned for other purposes - such as bypassing EAC, FACEIT, ESL, ESEA. Most often it is made for legitimate play on matches, streams and various ladders.

How to deliver to the client's computer:Have protection against "drain". You download the client in a password-protected archive with a random name, following the precautionary rules specified by the provider. It does not have a cheat in itself and is a “client” for downloading the latest version of the cheat from the provider’s server (which is unique with each download. Or sometimes not.

At the first start, the client is tied to the buyer’s hardware and sometimes installs a driver (but now the golden rule - the client should not leave any traces behind.) The subsequent injection can occur in different ways and can sometimes be a rather interesting implementation of protection against detection.

An example of what a paid cheat looks like

3. Private cheat with limited slots / private hack. Often confused with "paid cheat", meaning private, and vice versa.

Price: €20-€500+

What: A cheat that is available only to a limited circle of people in order to avoid detection, or delay it as much as possible. Sometimes a private provider can sell such a cheat, limiting the number of purchases to 10 or 100-200 so that it has the smallest possible audience and does not attract attention. These are not known to me. Basically, these are privately written cheats that are sold on forums or various marketplaces. Most often they have under 10-50 “free” slots, tied to hardware, and can have very different functionality.

Such cheats are made mainly to bypass third-party anti-cheats, or to constantly play on the basis for many years. Depending on the skill of the author, they may never be detected at all. And they can get banned after a couple of months.

How they are delivered to the client's computer: They have protection against "draining". The method of delivery depends on the creativity of the author and may be similar to the delivery of a paid cheat.

An example of selling a private cheat

4. Custom cheat. The rarest option for the richest, but it also exists.

Price: € Four figures.

What: The person hires the services of a programmer. Practically not practiced, but exists. Sometimes you will see topics like "[WTB] private hack/cheat coder for 1 user, budget $2000". There is a risk of getting a template cheat “for fuck off”, so people with a budget buy privates.

How it is delivered to the client's computer: The method of delivery depends on the creativity of the author and such information is not publicly available.

Functionality of paid cheats

The functionality, name and grouping of settings differ from provider to provider. Some rivet template cheats for a vast number of games, some specialize in Valve games, sometimes making cheats for other games on a “if not lazy” basis, and then we will consider the feature set of an average paid cheat. It mainly consists of an interface for settings, and:

Aimbot
Triggerbot
Visuals (visuals, ESP, wallhack)
Add. Functions that don't fit into any of the categories, for example: jump, knife trigger, speedhack, fakelag, nickname spam, chat spam, hover, spinbot/spinhack.

The implementation and name may differ from provider to provider, but the principle of operation remains the same.

Aimbot

In the case of paid cheats, Aimbot is just a part of a complex cheat, and paid cheats with a monthly payment are precisely complex and rather complex cheats. In public, they are simply called - VX or aimbot, without thinking what exactly these words mean. In fact, these cheats are "multihacks", just "hacks", or P2C (pay2cheat, paycheat, and various slang variations). More often they are called “cheats”, although outside the Russian-speaking countries they are precisely “hacks” (“hacks”).

Aimbot is just part of a complex cheat, and can have one or more modes / tabs for settings: Aimbot, Ragebot, FullRage, Legitbot, MM, LegitAim (they are called differently, but the purpose of the mode is conveyed).

A typical "aimbot in a vacuum" looks like this: you hold down the button, the sight jumps to a given part of the enemy's body and guides it exactly in the center until the button is released. It can be activated, for example, by such triggers as: “when shooting”, “by pressing the button”, “first 3 bullets”. Contrary to popular belief, the aimbot will not fire on its own unless AutoFire is turned on. As a rule, the audience is scorched by the fact that the sight abruptly "jumps" on the target in a straight line, and the jerks do not coincide with the general style of the cheater's game. Initially, the aimbot was simply fixed on some part of the enemy’s body (head, for example) and from the outside it is very obvious. Over time, aimbot has evolved, acquired a more finger-free mode and a bunch of settings.

How does it look from the side? The cheater sees you, his sight abruptly jumps to a given part of the body in a straight line, and shoots (with or without sight shaking). Revealing is quite easy if the aimbot is not "hidden" by other settings.

The different groups with settings are as follows:

One of them can be called Ragebot - this is aimbot, where the settings are made for "full drive" (rage, "go full rage"). In it, you can unscrew the settings to the maximum and “break everything around”. This tab can contain such settings as AntiAim (spinhack). In this case, the player can spin and shoot through all possible places on the map. Depending on the author of the cheat, it can be quite a powerful thing, especially with "Wallscan" (Autowall, scanning of shooting points). Then you run around the map, spin around, and break everything around, even if the enemy sticks out his heel in a shot-through place, but it depends on the skill of the cheat writer.

A powerful cheat for a full live can be called ragehack (rage hack). This cheat was originally planned to break as much as possible at maximum settings. However, such a cheat always has a legit mode. Before CS:GO improved defense, such a cheat was just hell for the enemy team: the cheater hovered in a jump, and, spinning, broke the enemy team even through walls and corners.

Another group of settings, if it exists at all, is intended for "pinless" play in matchmaking, or on streams. Most often these settings are called "Legitbot"with a hint that this is an aimbot. This is not entirely true, and is used more to separate settings. There is an aimbot in this category, but it is only used for certain types of weapons, such as AWP. Has a more "legitimate" hold with less obvious aiming, or "releases" the target after the n-th shot.

Cheaters who don't want to get burned use two combinations in a rough simplification:

Aimbot with a narrow angle of capture + SilentAim, so that the jerks of the sight are not visible to the spectators and the patrol. In CS:GO, it is used for sniper rifles to one-shot "on skill". At a closer view, you can see how a person shoots past, and a bullet from an AWP flies in a completely different direction, and exactly in the body/head. It is rarely used, because it is very noticeable, and you need to monitor the shooting all the time so as not to burn yourself.
Triggerbot with increased hit rate. When increasing the percentage of hits, sometimes it makes sense to turn on SilentAim so that there is no shaking of the sight (depends on the implementation). But then the situation is repeated, as with the AWP - the cheater fires a burst into his hand, and the bullets go to the head, dropping to the neck or torso. It is almost always used , because this is the most painless way to "direct the bullets where necessary", while not shaking the camera. And here we go to the triggerbot:

Triggerbot

It was originally a function that fires a shot when an enemy enters the crosshairs. And that's all. An example of use is on de_dust2 to aim with the AWP at the gate, hold down the button that turns it on, and wait for the enemy to run through the scope. The rifle will fire itself. The triggerbot was used to "react".

In our time, the triggerbot has evolved and now only the cheapest, lazily written cheats are “reacted”. Modern triggerbots have learned not only to shoot in a situation where you hit the enemy 100%, but also to “correct” the spread during the shot, “directing the bullets” where necessary - namely, to selected parts of the body. In 99% of cases, it is configured to turn on by the firing button. The main goal of the triggerbot is to kill the enemy in 1-5 shots in the least pale, but consistently.It is with him that most cheaters play , preferring a triggerbot instead of an aimbot.

The spread is "corrected" by one or a combination of both methods:

The scope moves down following the weapon's spread pattern. When you hold down the fire button, the weapon goes down so that all the bullets hit the same spot. Although it is not a triggerbot, it is most often configured through it.
Adjusts the spread to increase the percentage of hits on the enemy, or in other words, "direct the bullets" where they need to be.

If in the case of an aimbot your sight was aimed so that the bullets flew where they needed to, then in the case of modern triggerbots, the bullets are already “aimed”. The main difference with the aimbot is that the deflection angle cannot be greater than the spread of the weapon itself. If a lazy Aimbot + SilentAim could aim a bullet at 20° from the scope, then with a triggerbot you will simply miss if the target is outside the spread cone.

It is incredibly difficult to catch a properly configured triggerbot, they often even play with it on streams, turning off the visuals. The sight does not jump and does not “lock” on body parts (as is the case with the aimbot).

How does it look from the side?

For example, a cheater can shoot on the run , and most of the bullets still hit the head/neck/chest. The spread of the weapon is not what it should be, and more bullets are hitting you than it should be. In CS:GO, this is very obvious when the distance increases, when the first thought after you are killed is “something too many bullets hit the head in a burst”.

You stuck your head half a map away, and a burst hit the center of it . It is the queue, or very fast single shots, which would still cause a return. The fact is that a skillful player can adjust the dispersion so that the bullets hit approximately one point ... but with increasing distance, the dispersion still cannot be adjusted so perfectly - this is striking.

On high settings: The cheater's crosshair is near his head (so that he misses otherwise), he shoots, the first 1-3 bullets hit the head, the next ones miss, following the spread of the weapon. Thanks to him, at high ranks, people do not understand how they got hit. And simply - they made a couple of shots next to your head.

They are obvious, but in direct hands it is still difficult to notice them.

As a rule, the goal of a triggerbot is to kill the enemy in 1-5 shots in the least pale, but consistently.

How to notice on the demo?

In inexperienced hands or with a “non-steaming” cheater, the triggerbot is easy to notice: the disassembly of the weapon does not follow what it should be, and it does not make maneuvers in order to make it less noticeable.

If a cheater makes attempts to hide, then earlier ( and now? ) when viewing a demo or a recording of Patrol, it was possible to turn on the visualization of scatter + recoil + hits. After that, they turned on the free camera and watched the place where the bullets hit. To counteract, the developers made it so that the bullets did not hit exactly in the center, so this method is not always relevant, but it helped a lot ( and still helps? ) Experienced Patrolmen.

It is difficult to notice them in direct hands - the cheater will actively disguise the triggerbot: sit down when shooting, do not fire more than 3-4 shots at a time, deliberately miss, or give up if more than two enemies come at him from different sides. However, sometimes the moments described above still slip through.

PS: Forgive me experts for such simplifications. Different providers group their settings in different ways, and sometimes a triggerbot can be a mixture of NoRecoil + NoSpread or reduce the spread by a given percentage, and sometimes only an aimbot can do it. For other providers, the triggerbot may not be a triggerbot in the classical sense of the word, but rather be engaged in “directing bullets” into the part of the body selected in the settings, introducing a specified percentage of misses. The topic is full of nuances, I tried to touch on it without reviewing several dozen implementation options.

Visuals / ESP / visuals; what is often referred to as "vh" or "wallhack" (wallhack)

The same VX that allows you to see through walls. It can be quite miserable and just draw squares around the enemies. And it can have a bunch of settings: painting the head in a bright color or highlighting player models, showing lives, armor, hitbox, weapons.

This may include features such as NoFlash, NoSmoke, NoSkybox, crosshair, mini-map (radar).

Other features

SilentAim: Has two related concepts.

First: Hides suspicious movements when pressing an aimbot or triggerbot. The first person camera does not jump, shake, or go down following the weapon spread pattern.

Second: You can move the camera no matter where you shoot. The essence of the function is that you can turn on the 360-degree view of the aimbot, go forward yourself, and the aimbot will kill people from behind (while the camera is looking forward, i.e. the camera does not depend on where the aimbot shoots). This worsened accuracy and responsiveness, but was popular on public servers so that you could "run and break everything around" without stopping to shoot.

Unmistakably fired by patrol (overwatch) - you shoot nowhere (or up / to the floor), and the enemy dies. Or the camera just looks up or down and spins (although from the side of the patrol, the spinbot looks exactly the same, but it depends on the straightness of the encoder). Another variation of SilentAim is combined with a triggerbot, as described above.

Spinhack / Spinbot / AntiAim: The player model starts spinning like hell around its axis, walking with its back twitching up and down, and all sorts of techniques have not been invented here. At the same time, he can look at the floor / up, or wave the sight. The main purpose of the spinbot is to play HvH (hack vs hack) and exists to mislead the aimbot/triggerbot of the cheater on the enemy team. HvH is when there are cheaters in both teams on the server, and one of them decides to “go and break” without hiding.

Cheap or copied cheats were very well deceived - the aimbot shot at a spinning model, sometimes in the head, but it did not hit and all the bullets flew past. One of the providers managed to make a very severe spin hack - you watch how they shoot you in the torso, but all the bullets fly through you and make sounds of a miss, and you have 100% hp. Sometimes it has features like “Fakeduck”, when the model also crouches very quickly, while maintaining running speed.

On the patrol demo or for the viewer, it looks like this: The camera is spinning like hell, looking up or down, sometimes also jerking the aim up and down. It stops spinning during shots, but skilled coders managed to insert “torsion” between shots.

Fakelag: To an outside observer, you're very much a lag. Used to mislead the aimbot of a cheater from the enemy team. Not effective against strong aimbots.

AirStuck: You hang in the air. Used exclusively in HvH games, for positioning. It allowed you to hang in the air, and hide body parts in non-shootable places where the enemy could not shoot you, and shoot him first.

This resulted in whole matches for all 30 rounds, because two experienced cheaters with full power broke each other with a 50% probability, and the rounds were about who would serve whom or who would endure whom.

bunnyhop/jump:Allows you to jump by holding one button. If the person in the jump isn't accelerating enough or makes a mistake, it's either a macro or a manual jump.

Patrol Demo Corruption: There used to be a private cheat that somehow corrupted the patrol demo, and it just wouldn't start with the reason "Evidence Invalid or Corrupt" or the camera was looking at one point without showing the gameplay. Remarkably, it was a private, not a corrupt cheat. Slots were sold for hundreds of dollars.

Fixed right after it started to spread, because someone leaked the method.

Why use CS:GO cheats. Before and now

It used to be a complete hell in CS:GO, when almost all cheats worked with full functionality, and Untrusted bans were rare. Now the number of cheaters has decreased, but, in my opinion, there are still very many of them there.

Here I will touch on some phenomena that are not quite known to the public.

Boosting / boosting / boost:Buying "victories" in order to obtain a high rank. Before the introduction of zeroing ranks in CS:GO, they boosted according to the following scheme - 4 schoolchildren + 1 cheater, who held W, and went to break with maximum settings. Sometimes he also twirled on purpose to annoy the enemy team, even if there was no cheater in it. This is not a joke about schoolchildren - if you vote for a general voice chat, then they start shouting (!) To you in a prepubescent voice, about how they bend over you, gg ez, you are a noob, hello moms, thanks for the victory.

Accounts for such purposes were taken in the following ways:

Drop account. A game / account was bought for a penny, after which the booster had to “squeeze” in as many matches as possible, the more the better. Often they went right away with a full squeeze, so that the enemy team kicked their own and voted to Surrender.
By account per match. Also, a game/account was bought for a penny, after which the cheater played one game from the account per day, with full play. In this case, the accounts were enough for a month, if you're lucky.

Hell itself began when two teams of boosters met, then the cheater tried to break the enemy, while slowly increasing the settings. The team helped him in this, for example, closing his cheater so that he had time to kill the enemy while he was killing them.

Patience burst and sometimes both cheaters cut to the fullest, and went to spin against each other. If one of them had a worse cheat, the losing team immediately began to feel sad and ceased to resist, while the winning ones sneered with might and main at the cheat, which could not break them, and poached clients for themselves.

Anti-boost: The opposite fun when 3-5 friends went looking for other boosters. For this, a game was bought, or stolen accounts with open matchmaking, several games were won with a score of 15-0, and the chance to get on boosters increased dramatically. Seeing nicknames containing the word "boost", in the opposite team 1-5 people cut down to the fullest and went to break.

As a rule, anti-boosters bought the strongest cheat, regardless of the price (but it was not always the most expensive). In their arsenal, in addition to cheats, there were various tactics for delaying the match.

Since the goal of boosters was to win as many games in a row against honest players as possible, delaying time could cost them both their account ( with a large number of reports, the patrol could ban them right during their game ) and clients.

When faced with anti-boosters, the boosters either gave up or tried to turn on full rage. As a rule, the anti-boosters won almost all the "skirmishes", so the boosters quickly gave up. Some, after several defeats and loss of clients, went to try different cheats.

The most "juice" was to find the same types on the next search, and once again break them with a full undercut, spamming the chat with the phrases "FREE ANTI-BOOST SERVICE".

If the booster cheat was not weak, the game could drag on for up to 30 rounds, with jailbreaks, hammer throws, and hanging in the air in non-shootable places. Anti-boosters, having the necessary experience, still often won, while dragging out the time that the boosters really needed, and increasing the chance of a ban.

Sometimes, if provoked by those who bought a boost strongly enough, they could make money from their main accounts. And even then they lost in 80% of cases, and at the same time they lost the main account. Often they would start to exit the game without leaving it to end the game. Then the class itself was to stretch the round in order to endure until the next one, and then wait for the ban of those who left the game, and break those who did not come out.

Now this kind of dubious "service" has almost disappeared, and they boost very carefully, not playing from one account more than once, and in general it has become unprofitable.

Bought hacked accounts on different sites, for a penny. They were used for “one-time” or “until the first ban”, and with them they went either to boost or break other boosters. Very sad personalities went to live alone, for several matches in matchmaking, after which they were banned, and the account was thrown out or the owner returned it soon.

Now the shop has almost been closed, starting to block all accounts on the computer of the buyer of accounts, and the number of people who like to download has decreased dramatically.

What do we have now? With the latest updates, many features have been made impossible. It is impossible to aimbot with 100% accuracy, it is impossible to run and break everything while spinning on the run. Attempts to even enable these features result in a 1-30 minute ban. And this is good.

Recently, Valve has increasingly begun to ban all accounts on the cheater's computer (from which he played during the period when he played with cheats on one of them). Ban if shared email and phone.

In general, I very much welcome these measures, and fully support methods that will identify cheaters and ban all their accounts, including the main one.

After a wave of bans, when the basics with skins for many thousands of euros were banned from cheaters, there were much fewer “living through” on MM servers. But, unfortunately, there are still too many of them.

How to play against a cheater using CS:GO as an example

Everyone knows that unpleasant feeling when a cheater comes across on the enemy team, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot win. Forget about winning because the cheater decides if you win the match or not. Start with a report. After that, your task in this game will be to dilute the cheater into mistakes and "fawn", which the Patrol considers sufficient for a ban. So what can you do?

Use smoke grenades more often. The most common mistake is when a cheater shoots into the smoke, supposedly "shooting through". The trick is if he has a triggerbot and shoots through the smoke you're standing in, the bullets can go off the scope and hit you. Or by shooting at a teammate who came out of the smoke, he can squeeze so that the sight will jump into the smoke after the teammate's death.
Try to go to the cheater, throwing blind grenades at him. This is the moment at which they can sleep. Or not to live at all, afraid to get on the demo.
Try teasing him around corners, such as making a move like you're about to go out, but don't go out.
Keep the standard places in which the cheater will sleep after coming at you.

Conclusion

Now, after you have read the publication, it may be easier for you to identify cheaters in games, or notice impossible moments. As mentioned above, the purpose of the publication is to tell what the mythical "aim and vh" is.

If after the publication it will be possible to edit the list of misconceptions (and questions), I will replenish them as the discussion progresses.

If you have corrections, clarifications, criticism or questions, I will be glad to accept and hear them.

Play fair!

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