Title: Modern Anti-Abuse Mechanisms in Competitive Video Games at Black Hat 2024
Date: 2024-08-09 00:30

[![Black Hat 2024 banner]({static}/images/BH_banner.png)](https://www.blackhat.com/us-24/briefings/schedule/index.html#modern-anti-abuse-mechanisms-in-competitive-video-games-38972)

To everybody's surprise, I got accepted at Black Hat USA 2024, to speak about
[Modern Anti-Abuse Mechanisms in Competitive Video Games](https://www.blackhat.com/us-24/briefings/schedule/index.html#modern-anti-abuse-mechanisms-in-competitive-video-games-38972).
It has been a childhood dream of mine to speak there, so I'm quite happy to be able to finally cross it off my wishlist.

Las Vegas is a despicable place at best, and taking the plane is an exercise in multidimensional
fractal of self-hatred levels, thanks in no small part to the CBP (+1h30) and American
Airlines (+4h), but the conference was nothing but impressive. First of, it's [__huge__](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandalay_Bay_Convention_Center), like
above CCC-level of huge, with more than 20.000 people attending in person. It's
also commercial, up to an impressive point: billboards
and ads full of buzzwords salad for big infosec companies are everywhere,
and the vendor floor has enough <s>junk</s> goodies to fill a 
landfill. But some of them were really nice: it was great to see old friends
at [Hex-Ray](https://hex-rays.com/), [Corellium](https://corellium.com)'s [capabilities](https://www.corellium.com/solutions/mobile-security-research)
are nothing but black magic, [Chainguard](https://chainguard.dev) was
surprisingly wholesome, have some conversation about the [tor
network](https://torproject.org) with [Team Cymru](https://team-cymru.com) and
[Human](https://humansecurity.com), get some news at [Fortra](https://fortra.com/),
discuss why I couldn't recommend [OffSec](https://www.offsec.com/)'s
trainings anymore with them, 
thank [Synopsys](https://synopsys.com)/[1Password](https://1password.com)/[Thinkst Canary](https://canary.tools/)
for the free tier of their products,
discuss static analysis with some engineers at [SemGrep](https://semgrep.dev/)
and dynamic one at [Mayhem](https://mayhem.security).
…
I even had some interesting job offers.
It was also a great opportunity to meet some acquaintances face-to-face,
and make new ones.

There was a mildly scary moment due to [WiFi breaking on
Asahi](https://social.treehouse.systems/@AsahiLinux/112909897657710314), but
nothing that couldn't be fixed while laying on an airport floor between
flights. Oh, and another one when Asahi Linux decided to not play nice with the
external display, and again when OSX' [Lockdown Mode](https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120) broke Google Slides.
Despite those hiccups, I think that my talk went pretty well, expect for my fumbled conclusion. You can get the slides
[here]({static}/files/BHUS24-Voisin-Modern-Anti-Abuse-Mechanisms-in-Competitive-Video-Games-Thursday.pdf),
or on [Black Hat USA 2024 website](https://i.blackhat.com/BH-US-24/Presentations/US24-Voisin-Modern-Anti-Abuse-Mechanisms-in-Competitive-Video-Games-Thursday.pdf), and view the talk [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8QaZkU55p8):

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I had the invaluable help of [Lukasz
Gogolkiewicz](https://blog.pentester.com.au/about/) via Black Hat's Speaker Coaching
Program who played no small part into significantly cranking up the
awesomeness of the talk; as well as friends who were voluntold to provide
feedback. Moreover, giving a talk based on [this small
blogpost]({filename}/games/reputation_and_cheats_mitigations.md) was
[cryptax](https://github.com/cryptax)' idea. Organisation-wise from the Black
Hat side, everything has been top-notch and a real pleasure to deal with; even
the (vegetarian) food was great!