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Analysis of Call of Duty's Anti-Cheat System TAC

/ 1 min read

🎮🔍 In-depth analysis of Black Ops Cold War’s user-mode anti-cheat system, TAC. A researcher has shared findings on the Treyarch Anti-Cheat (TAC) system used in Black Ops Cold War, highlighting its user-mode architecture, which lacks the kernel-mode component found in newer titles. The analysis details various protective measures employed by TAC, including obfuscation techniques via Arxan, runtime API checks, and detection of debugging attempts. Key features include monitoring for API hooks, detecting console allocations, and identifying external cheat overlays. The research emphasizes TAC’s sophisticated methods for thwarting cheating, such as encrypted syscall stubs and anti-debugging techniques, while noting that similar strategies are being implemented in modern Call of Duty games. Further updates on the research are anticipated.

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