Cheat-maker brags of computer-vision auto-aim that works on “any game”

When it comes to the cat-and-mouse game of stopping cheaters in online games, anti-cheat efforts often rely in part on technology that ensures the wider system running the game itself isn't compromised. On the PC, that can mean so-called "kernel-level drivers" which monitor system memory for modifications that could affect the game's intended operation. On consoles, that can mean relying on system-level security that prevents unsigned code from being run at all (until and unless the system is effectively hacked, that is).

The basic toolchain used for these external emulated-input cheating methods is relatively simple. The first step is using an external video capture card to record a game's live output and instantly send it to a separate computer. Those display frames are then run through a computer vision-based object detection algorithm like You Only Look Once (YOLO) that has been trained to find human-shaped enemies in the image (or at least in a small central portion of the image near the targeting reticle).

Once the enemy is identified on the screen, these cheating engines can easily calculate precisely how far and in which direction the mouse needs to move to put that enemy (or even a specific body part, like the head) in the center of the crosshairs. That data is then sent to an input-passthrough device like the Titan Two or the Cronus Zen, which emulates the correct mouse input and fires a shot at superhuman speed.

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