Intro to Game Hacking: DEFCON 32

Рет қаралды 95,411

John Hammond

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 196

@stevest15 4 ай бұрын

My hacking origin story began with game hacking. I love the disclaimers everyone does before.

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

Mine did, too. Game hacking is the reason I am here, today. :)

@kopuz.co.uk. 3 ай бұрын

Same when I was younger I didn't realize the r/e skills that I was learning back then would be useful as an adult. Back then I learnt how to reverse MASM using T-Search before I could code.

@CyberDr4g0n-Sup 3 ай бұрын

Same! =)

@gamer_X322 3 ай бұрын

Hey, this is a very basic level stuf, but where can i get some advanced stuff like pointer and offset mapping

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

@@gamer_X322 it's coming, eventually. Have to start small and build our way up. Unity and C# are a bit different than the way you would do it in a native architecture program. I'm actually not entirely sure the best way to do that in C#, as, the code that is ran ends up being JIT code that is compiled and written at runtime, so you can't see it in dnspy to signature it. I am also not sure how deterministic JIT code is. Once we get to their next challenges, I will try to add some stuff about how to scan for pointers, etc. Have you tried the cheat engine tutorial that comes with cheat engine? It's in the help menu.

@DigitalDimension7 3 ай бұрын

This video really brought back memories! I used to play around with Cheat Engine as a kid, tweaking single-player games just for fun-changing variables, giving myself more money, and exploring game mechanics in ways I never thought of as “hacking.” For me, it was always just playing around, never something I considered a serious hacking activity. Watching you dive into the same tool with a cybersecurity lens is both nostalgic and eye-opening. It’s incredible how something that starts as innocent fun can develop into valuable skills in the cybersecurity field. I had no malicious intent; for me, it was just playing around.

@UnfiItered 3 ай бұрын

The basic memory manipulation from CE. Where the fun part is the lua/scripts and pointers. Sometimes just the basic memory manipulation isn't enough, now you need to play with the pointers and set up a lua/script. You'll notice that some games, even when you do memory manipulation, the manipulation doesn't stick. You dig deep enough and you can change things. Say for example you want to change a item into another item. Or change a character into another character. All possible.

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

Yup. I know. But we have to teach from the start, since this is new territory for the channel. I'll get to the cool stuff with John. I promise. :)

@Smoth48 3 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 I am so excited for this! I've set up quite a few basic scripts myself in the past, leveraging data structures to filter out specific addresses and whatnot, but beyond there the existing online guides get to be pretty hard to follow. I would love to have John guide us through some badass and technical memory manipulation >:)

@trentondickey9061 3 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 Im stoked to see more. I didn't start with game like most people seem to

@implode3 3 ай бұрын

Kind of what got me into programming, grabbing text files from Ultima 4 or other early games as a kid.

@tuomaskk 3 ай бұрын

Same here. Edited my stats all to BCD 99, viewed and edited maps, and of course read all NPC texts. Good times. Wrote my map tile loader and editor in 6502 machine code and basic. Then went on ripping music routines of Rob Hubbard and created mybown demos.

@YuviApp 3 ай бұрын

As someone who is always reverse engineering games. If this was me in a CTF, I would have just found the value that controls the enemies health by using “unknown starting value” then damaged the gun/unicorn, paused then then did “value decreased” and keep repeating that until I found a value that seems to align with a health bar. Therefore you could just set the enemy object to 0 HP and beat the objective. And depending on how the game was programmed it might use the same memory location for same enemy on each map. If you had multiple enemies, pull up the memory viewer then look at that region of memory which should have all the enemies attributes in a one location.

@mannymore_music 3 ай бұрын

Exactly my thoughts, just not sure whether you would have to find them again for each level or if they may be grouped as you said

@Dakktyrel 4 ай бұрын

This reminds me of the Diablo 2 character editors back in the 90's. Cool stuff, thank you sir.

@Ozzy-Cricket 3 ай бұрын

I was game hacking in my teens in the early 90s. That consisted of trawling through assembler reading the program sector by disk sector to get around protections.. Now those were the days..

@ai-spacedestructor 3 ай бұрын

that sounds so cool but also tedious at the same time.

@zombieboyxx 3 ай бұрын

i wish i understood what u said lol sounds awesome

@Ozzy-Cricket 3 ай бұрын

All I did was use it to give myself infinite lives before the internet existed to download cracks. Back then games took over the whole system, and the games were stored on disk with thier own unique file system, and had special loaders, so easiest to use an assembler to read the disk directly. Then just look for a memory slot set to 3 then decreased by 1 at some point, very similar to what John does in this vid.. Didn't always work, but often did.

@Palmit_ 4 ай бұрын

Yes Please. there are some good tutorials about Cheat Engine on KZbin, but John, you manage to explain and show concepts in a way that is more matched to my learning ability. Looking forward to learning LUA scripting and finding advanced pointers and more advanced things about CE.

@ai-spacedestructor 3 ай бұрын

same, i have watched several tutorials about cheat engine before and sure i picked up a few details but i think this video was the only i have seen so far which managed to tie everything together so i can work with cheat engine without the need of hand holding.

@Palmit_ 3 ай бұрын

@@ai-spacedestructor Agreed. 💯

@hacking4good 4 ай бұрын

John Hammond is the "David Attenborough" of cyber security youtube channels, and more 😁

@ModernityX 3 ай бұрын

im a big game hacking enthusiast, i love you John

@bIeaq 3 ай бұрын

It's so weird seeing Cheat Engine in a John Hammond video. I used this tool as a kid. Thought everyone did. Although, I also modded ds games and installed custom firmware as a kid, so maybe it's not that normal

@netting. 3 ай бұрын

Very nice video with a pretty interesting topic! Hope to see more on this ;)

@bankmanager 3 ай бұрын

This is a great video. I haven't used cheat engine in about 10 years but I had no idea what I was doing then.

@rakly347 3 ай бұрын

The video starts at 18:14

@BruceMaximusLee 3 ай бұрын

It's really funny that i was about to write the same comment 😂😂😂 my man just wasted more than half of the video to setup the env and talk about the sponsor then the yt add ofc poped up and yeah 20 mins just wasted like that 😂

@abhijithsuren 3 ай бұрын

😂😂😂😂😂

@abhijithsuren 3 ай бұрын

@@BruceMaximusLee🤣🤣🤣🤣😂

@albertwesker2k24 3 ай бұрын

The amount of yapping is crazy just to tell us some same basic thing which everyone knew since elementary school 😂

@DS6Prophet 3 ай бұрын

Please make more of these!! 😊

@PeterNgugi-f3u 3 ай бұрын

You are the best KZbinr

@0.12palebluedot 3 ай бұрын

Hi John! amazing walkthrough. Would love to see some tutorials as well as to how USB Rubber ducky works.

@W3r3-w0lf 3 ай бұрын

Nice one, john!!! I remember doing reverse engineering with a cheat engine, and it was awesome... for changing values in games even in jalibroken iPhone for mobile penetration back then the process was same but with different tools.

@ai-spacedestructor 3 ай бұрын

i could be wrong but i assume most likely you wouldnt have needed to delete and re scan all of the values every level. the smart way would probably be to find out the logic where it moves to on the next level and write one of those "scripts" or whatever they are called that i have seen for some games where cheat engine is teached the logic behind it and will automatically figure out what memory space to target for the value so that you dont have to find it again every time it changes.

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

You could go look for a static pointer and traverse to the player structure every time, yes, but the point of this video was an introduction to some of the tools, like cheat engine. Also, C# binaries are easier to RE, sure, but the memory layout is a bit more complicated. If I were to do something to track the player structure from level to level, I might use something like Harmony.

@ai-spacedestructor 3 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 i understand that it wasnt the focus in the game but he could have done that to the results after showing how to find it and just cut it out. which would have the benefits that he would in one go record the footage for two videos with just a few minutes more work time. i was just surprised he didnt make it any more convenient to him self then the most basic and easy way to do it.

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

@@ai-spacedestructor it's not that easy to cut out of the results, though. Not entirely sure how CE handles C# AoBs. C# is also one of those languages that you would abuse reflection, rather than signaturing with AoBs. You can somewhat do that in C++ with RTTI data, but, usually use a signature for that, as most functions and statics can't be found via reflection.

@ai-spacedestructor 3 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 no idea what any of that means, im not that deep in to it as a beginner. i just saw some files i could import for cheat engine which automated the process to find values for me 😅

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

@@ai-spacedestructor you mean a cheat table?

@sassywoocooo 3 ай бұрын

oh boy keep up this kind of stuff. i love gaming.

@SNSISNSJISEJSJS 4 ай бұрын

Lets GOOOOO Jhon is awesome 👾

@richbecker3810 3 ай бұрын

Great video I'll like to see more game hacking for sure

@Username8281 3 ай бұрын

Love this series

@bastienmigette4259 3 ай бұрын

Very interesting stuff, as usual :)

@eyezikandexploits 4 ай бұрын

We need an AFL video pleaseeee, using afl to find crack and then understanding it in ghidra

@GreenSmile22 3 ай бұрын

Are you using vertical machine in this video

@electromods 3 ай бұрын

Cool Video!

@IlluviAsh 3 ай бұрын

Combines my 2 favorite passions, love it.

@ethicalhaxonly 3 ай бұрын

Thank you! Got me started down a new route in my spare time!

@CyberNinja-p1t 3 ай бұрын

Thank you for the video, looking forward for other levels

@adambamf9365 3 ай бұрын

im gonna give it a go

@NihongoNovice 3 ай бұрын

Great video

@wolfgang2587 3 ай бұрын

only on windows?

@ChristopherBruns-o7o 3 ай бұрын

17:30 So could the permissions be changed to read only for infinite health?

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

No, because the game would crash when it tries to write to the read-only memory

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

The best way to do that would be to find the instructions that write to the players health. If they are specific to the player, you can just NOP them. If they are shared by other entities, then you will have to do some code injection and then check if the entity being damaged is the player or not.

@nextgodlevel 3 ай бұрын

is reverse engineering is same as hacking?

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

Reverse engineering is part of hacking, I would say.

@starlox0 3 ай бұрын

Awesome 😮😮

@HEXiT_ 4 ай бұрын

been a fan of cheat-engine for over a decade now. there example walkthrough.. not the easiest to follow.. but getting the basics.. easy enough. fair warning though. always manually update CE and block its in-coming and outgoing connections. as it has in the past tried to put a dropper on my system. the dropper can be quarantined and doesn't affect the application running.. but know it can turn up if you leave cheat engines ports open. :)

@nordgaren2358 4 ай бұрын

Cheat Engine is a dangerous tool. It's also amazing. So it's kinda hard to put down. 😂 Just don't go opening up strange tables!

@lapasorsa9022 3 ай бұрын

True. I'm not hacking games , but I like the idea of knowing what you can or can not do. Games are now figuring out what to do with players with VPN users because abuse of games which give advances for gamer from Turkey. Many players use that advance to get things much cheaper than from their home country and it has made many players kicked out from games or having debug. Not an issue to gamer who use cloud for gaming. Then you have "real" pc in that land you want. It's not Engine but still you have major advance to kids who don't have money to pay today's high prices for gaming.

@ThomasSummerfield 3 ай бұрын

Do you actually need the powertoys thing if you have a second monitor

@fdert 4 ай бұрын

its 3rd party, but I love turbotop for keeping windows on top. it just works

@rumblingroland6877 3 ай бұрын

I used to mess around with cheat engine in singleplayer games after i played them through. One day i used it in a dota 2 match with bots to cheat some money. End of the story i got banned forever due to valve detected some third party software. Just wanted to raise some awareness.

@itrippy4206 3 ай бұрын

you can go into the launch options of the games properties and type -insecure to disable vac

@BaneWilliams 3 ай бұрын

This is really good for me. I'm working on a game and I know another game in the genre has a couple of vulnerabilities that people exploit - figuring out how that is exploited will allow me to make a better more secure final product.

@DesiredHeadshot 3 ай бұрын

Which VM would be good for this or what is John using?

@SD-Gamer 3 ай бұрын

i do work in cybersecurity and i am learning cheat dev so i know cheat engine already

@Adam3301d 3 ай бұрын

You have to mention that memory manipulation is only useful with the offline games, but online games like pubg this method will never work because there is two copies of data one on your device and the other is on the server and if u could modify your copy you will never can modify the server copy. Only way to deal with online games is to run a third party application

@notcluewhereiam 3 ай бұрын

"It's over 9000!!!!"😨

@OmaraAJ 3 ай бұрын

Love your content. Always edutaining. Btw, where is defcon streamed, what channels......

@clorets4509 3 ай бұрын

how we can automate that with python

@OKRASSnaky 3 ай бұрын

What's nice is that Cheat Engines goes so beyond game hacking only, as this might be one of the simplest yet efficient way to bypass any thick client stuff (like so called "security licence keys", "activation codes", etc). So one of the nicest way I use to prove that some thick client projects are doomed from scratch and are actually far better suited for SaaS business instead.

@mattplaygamez 3 ай бұрын

One of the next videos could be CSGO (not CS2) to learn a harder game

@KillianTwew 3 ай бұрын

Could you write a game in rust so cheatengine cant change values in memory?

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

No, because cheat engine can also change memory permissions.

@gks554 2 ай бұрын

What subject does this refer to in cybersecurity? Is it called Reverse engineering??

@IGMWDS 3 ай бұрын

Make a script for all of those levels, that would be helpful & useful

@NemanjaVojinovic-x8g 3 ай бұрын

Cant believe Cheat Engine is still around. I remember using it like in 2012, 2013 maybe :D Those were days :D Nice

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

Honestly, it's my favorite debugger. Even in malware.

@Kabluey2011 3 ай бұрын

The MC in this game kinda looks like Perry the Platapus from Phineas and Ferb

@matthelton6637 3 ай бұрын

I'd like to see more videos. I've been using Cheat Engine for a while now for single-player games that I didn't have the time or desire to grind crafting items in. One thing I struggled with, and still haven't fully understood, is how to make a cheat table/trainer that doesn't need to manually get entered every time. For instance, in Alien: Isolation, the addresses change each time you launch the game so saving a cheat table is pointless. Each time you play, you'd need to open CE, bind it to the game EXE, and search for the values. If you didn't pick up or use a crafting item, you'd have to wait till you did to narrow down the amounts. I tried following a guide online about making cheat tables by looking into address modification stuff, but it didn't make much sense to me and/or crashed the game more often than not. That's the kind of stuff I'd like to see better tutorials on.

@TheHoboNation 4 ай бұрын

Do more! :) 👾

@dip9995 4 ай бұрын

Yes do more

@fritsonpetitfrere9038 3 ай бұрын

More!

@trentondickey9061 3 ай бұрын

Only us hackers download our tools that we didn't make from the sketchiest of websites lol. CHEAT ENGINE

@asbfabfoaijfo8 3 ай бұрын

I remember using chwat engine ti bypass the login acreen of Minecraft education edition.

@allaboutplayer2004 3 ай бұрын

Can u make a video on speed hack in asphalt 8 ?

@codehokage1977 3 ай бұрын

So dope

@ChickieDonahue 3 ай бұрын

Can someone forward me link to download cheat engine without ransomware and virus? I can't seem to find it now. Thanks

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

There is no ransomware. You just have to click "Skip All' to the adware, like the video shows.

@attribute-4677 4 ай бұрын

Trainers? Welcome to 1999

@popeyehacks 4 ай бұрын

Here ❤

@realavdhut 4 ай бұрын

make it a series

@lII_spetsnaz_lII11 3 ай бұрын

Great video

@mrgeebee1622 4 ай бұрын

A recommendation with CE, download the source code and compile it yourself. I takes a few minutes longer, but you are safe from any bloatware that the default installer is doing.

@nordgaren2358 4 ай бұрын

You can also decline the default bloatware. This works for 90% of cases, but sucks when you need their driver.

@mrgeebee1622 4 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 And that the easy way is compile it, it's made in Pascal and easy compiled with Lazarus.

@nordgaren2358 4 ай бұрын

@@mrgeebee1622you can't just compile the driver. It's not signed, if you do.

@mrgeebee1622 4 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 Works fine with Lazrus for me.

@PeterNgugi-f3u 3 ай бұрын

I've been seeing your Vedios and you made me hate myself. I really don't know anything about computer science😢

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

Don't hate yourself! It just takes time to understand! Keep pushing, and you will get there. I promise!

@Buizie 4 ай бұрын

damn I'm too early for a john hammond vid 😭 also can you change your twitter pfp now? xddd

@ModifiedMike 3 ай бұрын

This man can do just about anything he can possibly imagine... Lets hack a video game.🤣

@RomanSoldier13 3 ай бұрын

Don't ya wanta vanta

@Steven-f6f 3 ай бұрын

can you or anyone dm me with that fresh windows vm he's using? i can't seem to find one, that isn't like win 7 xD like even off archive

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/

@zephh_sk 3 ай бұрын

Ah yes, the good old days of me using CE to get my mom trillions of currency in FarmVille just for the devs to roll back everything several days later.

@Cinemovie_Plus 3 ай бұрын

more !!!!!!

@MichaelOfRohan 3 ай бұрын

Ive seen people go through more effort to hack a game that they suck at than Ive heard many people put into a bank robery.

@spicywe1ner 4 ай бұрын

Hell yea Nord Mentioned!

@nordgaren2358 4 ай бұрын

@lapasorsa9022 3 ай бұрын

Unity is the worst. They released their game engine about 10-15 years ago to public and it was the worst thing to do. I studied it with few different programs including one from NSA. Stupid enough? NO! Everything was easy to read and change to what ever you wanted. "Secure part" could be looped, so it never did anything but "checks". No out going info. Now it has to, but it still can be set up to send "OK"

@lapasorsa9022 3 ай бұрын

I'll add to this, I'll never hack games. There is no game if you hack them.

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

@@lapasorsa9022 hacking them IS the game...

@lapasorsa9022 3 ай бұрын

@nordgaren2358 If you like abusing, yes. Reminds me about cops who abuse with their "qualified immunity"- Not so fun? NO! Knowing and letting platforms to know, how it's been done, is also one sort of game. Or hacking Windows, or what ever and let them know how it's done. I'll prefer the last one.

@nordgaren2358 3 ай бұрын

@@lapasorsa9022 no?

@lapasorsa9022 3 ай бұрын

@@nordgaren2358 No what? Hacking is one sort of "gaming" but is it really your game? Tells a lot about person. I hate ALL abusing, no matter what. You would be mad if any abusive action would be against your family, but you are willing to do it yourself? Sounds pretty insane.

@thecooldudes69420 4 ай бұрын

Oh.

@NightFyreTV 2 ай бұрын

13 minutes in "we finally have our environment ready" . lol

@XA7UM 3 ай бұрын

Bro upload the next part also....... 💀

@imperia777 3 ай бұрын

GameTools 3.23 by Wong Wing Kin for DOS

@ITTom 3 ай бұрын

Cheat Enging looks exactly like using Action Replay on Amiga.

@cybersec1337 3 ай бұрын

Dude, the only way this days is DMA 😂

@vladbarbu3372 4 ай бұрын

Nice, *a friend* 😁 used cheat engine on GTA 5 online at the roulette wheel, you can manipulate the number on which it's gonna land 😂. Made few tens of millions in one day and quit the game cause it got boring 😂 I don't know if they fix it, you can even find the way to hack on some forums 🤔

@TheThreatActor 3 ай бұрын

Connect to a VPN or proxy before playing Online, people can grab your IP.

@UnfiItered 3 ай бұрын

@@TheThreatActoronly true for p2p games or playing on a private server and that private server isn't configured correctly or the hacker is hosting the private server themselves. On most game public server, they only see the server IP.