John Romero
Outsmarting the System: What Game Cheaters Can Teach Us About Cyber Security
#1about 3 minutes
The financial impact and common methods of game cheating
Cheating costs the gaming industry billions annually and drives away players, with common methods including aimbots, wallhacks, and memory modification.
#2about 3 minutes
How cheat developers operate like SaaS businesses
Sophisticated cheating operations function like enterprise-grade SaaS businesses with subscription models, customer support, and advanced software engineering.
#3about 3 minutes
The rise of AI in both cheating and detection
AI is now used to create superhuman cheat bots, which in turn requires defensive AI that uses behavioral analysis and anomaly detection to identify them.
#4about 2 minutes
Riot Games' Vanguard and kernel-level anti-cheat
Riot Games' Vanguard system operates at the kernel level of the operating system for deep system monitoring, but this invasive approach carries security risks.
#5about 1 minute
The escalating arms race of adversarial machine learning
Cheat developers use adversarial machine learning techniques to test and train their bots against detection systems, creating a continuous feedback loop of evasion.
#6about 2 minutes
The business risks and black market economies of cheating
The economic footprint of cheating includes black market economies for account boosting, money laundering through virtual currencies, and catastrophic damage to brand reputation.
#7about 3 minutes
Applying gaming anti-cheat lessons to cybersecurity
Techniques like behavioral baselining, anomaly detection, and real-time data streaming used in gaming can be applied to detect fraud and insider threats in other industries.
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From learning to earning
Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.




Senior C++ Proprietary Game Engine/Tooling Developer (Remote)
NeuralAI
Remote
€70-140K
Senior
API
C++
DirectX
+3

Senior C++ Proprietary Game Engine/Tooling Developer (Remote)
NeuralAI
Remote
€70-140K
Senior
API
C++
GIT
+3



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