ST-CS-10-339-75
March 2002

SECTION VIII

HACKS AND CHEATS  (S)

1.  Introduction  (S)

Counter-Strike is one of the most popular on-line games in the world. As such, a number of cheats have been developed and are under continual development. At the same time, counter-cheat programs race to keep up - a classic arms race, but one in which the defender is forever one step behind because the counter-cheat programs have no knowledge of the next improvements in the cheats, whereas the cheats are fully aware of the current state of the counter-cheats.

The basic method of cheating is for the client to run auxilary software which over-rides the player's display (providing the ability to set all objects to be white, for example), the player's movement (automatically locking onto and tracking a target) and the player's behaviour (automatically firing).

The only action taken by the author during the video capture was the initial right strafe from behind cover. After that, all aiming and firing behaviour was autonomously performed by the cheat.

Clearly, we are not all playing the same game.