Preventing Client-Side Exploits in Games with Capability Architectures

Client-side exploits, such as wall-hacks and aimbots, affect the competitive integrity of games. Competitive games prevent such exploits through kernel-level monitoring that not only invades the player’s privacy but also potentially opens a channel for kernel-level attacks on the player’s computer.Capability architectures, which attach additional metadata to memory, offer a solution to preventing client-side exploits that can be palatable to both players and game designers. By compartmentalizing memory with restricted permissions, games can prevent players from viewing or modifying memory associated with the game directly. However, games need not have access to the entire system at the kernel-level to perform this task. We propose integrating a first-person shooter running on Linux within a modern capability architecture.