What really is the Cost

[killertaco]

What Really is the Cost: of getting a cheat made?

Story

So I started cheating in EFT many years ago (4yrs at least) this was due to #1 the game being difficult and #2 having a full time job and having limited time to play. I found cheating to be a nice way to make the game "more easily accessible". The provider I used is and continues to be great with zero problems and very very few detections. As time went on and being the curious person I am, I started researching video game hacking just because I was fascinated by the ways people circumvent anti-cheats in creative ways. As I researched more I stumbled upon the EXACT cheat I have been using and paying monthly on for years and its source code. Now this code is old and needs updating so I don't fault the provider for charging a monthly fee to keep the cheat working, updated and undetected I think that's worth the money in itself. But being an entrepreneur, I thought to myself why couldn't I do the exact same thing this provider is doing. Hire a dev to update the code and create a Kernel level driver to bypass the anti-cheat, charge a monthly fee and keep a dev around to keep things running.

The Problem
As I went about soliciting Dev services to help me on my journey I came across some problems. Alot of the problems were brought on about by simply being new and ignorant. The first problem, I posted on ePVP Coders Trading (buying) and solicited what I was looking for and linked by Discord. I got absolutely bombarded by tons of people trying to sell me some copy pasta crap they found on GitHub for $300+. This brings us to our second problem: Scammers. After sifting through the trash I narrowed it down to about 5 guys who I felt could actually provide me with what I was looking for. After having pretty good conversations with all of them about what I was looking for, we talked about price. One guy said he would do it for $650, one for no less then $1300, one wouldn't even start the project unless I gave him $3K to upfront and the trend continued until I was finally quoted $10K. Next came vetting, My thinking was to look through their ePVP profiles and their UC profiles. If they had positive reputation between the two profiles I would move forward. A Second step and IMO the most important step I took was to actually message the ePVP and UC profiles. This proved to be the best method of vetting because I eliminated about 80% of my candidates. The ePVP or UC profiles and in a matter of two messages through ePVP or UC literally "hey I just wanted to vet you through the profile you gave me on Discord to make sure your legit" about 80% came back with "um we never spoke on discord". This was kind of a bummer but at least weeding out the incompetent scammers is easy.

The Question
After all is said and done the biggest question I have is really How much does it cost to update some base code and get a working Kernel level driver that i can use to bypass EAC/BE and play online with my cheats. My current quotes range from $500-10,000.

side note: would it be constructive to link the base code here for reference?

[kissein]

Depending on the exclucivity of the agreement, $10k sounds ok. Have sold single use cheats up to $30k. Cheats for the masses can be sold upto $1k per update.

Frequenzy of AC vendor updates also dictates prices.

[Omdi]

Do not trust any coder who wants to sell a private or custom cheat, especially for games protected by BE, EAC, or VGK. Why would they sell their precious, undetected cheat to you for merely $5,000 to $10,000? They could sell their cheat to many more customers or even create their own pay-to-cheat service.

Most offers are scams; they send you detected code. Keeping a cheat safe is a demanding task, especially when selling to many customers. Note: private cheats are not inherently safer in this regard.

I highly doubt that any of the coders who contacted you can confidently keep their cheats undetected. In fact, 99% are detected from the start.

[A.taxia]

Answering your question - these days even EAC/BE are very hard to keep up with just external Kernel level chair. They progressed a lot and it is just not worth to make that kind of cheats. Cheating scene just switched for 2PC solutions with DMA boards, fusers and other things because it's much easier to keep everything undetected. But to stay undetected u also need high level and private firmwares that can cost above 2k. So answering that question you would need the budget atleast around 4k to collect everything but if you wanna hire some dev to make the firmwares for you it can be hard, because we mostly run our own projects and are strictly private for small groups. For sure everybody writing to you first and trying to sell something is 99% scam. Good stuff is just kept private.

[bugz b]

Originally Posted by Omdi

Do not trust any coder who wants to sell a private or custom cheat, especially for games protected by BE, EAC, or VGK. Why would they sell their precious, undetected cheat to you for merely $5,000 to $10,000? They could sell their cheat to many more customers or even create their own pay-to-cheat service.

Most offers are scams; they send you detected code. Keeping a cheat safe is a demanding task, especially when selling to many customers. Note: private cheats are not inherently safer in this regard.

I highly doubt that any of the coders who contacted you can confidently keep their cheats undetected. In fact, 99% are detected from the start.

To back this up, I, specifically, consider myself rather embedded in the EFT p2c community. I've not been around recently but still hold relationships with many individuals in the scene.

I am not only very close with but am staff/admin in many of the private channels of old UC Admins that have been running 20 slotted, undetected, and have implemented many of the features you find on the most expensive public p2c's you see now, years ago.

Just to give you a practical perspective - You will often find that AT THE MINIMUM, someone who is REALLY trying to create a long-term p2c that they want to build a community with is a developer themselves, or is going to hire the 2 necessary components: The security guy and the actual features guy. It's not always this black and white but security researchers often have a crazy in-depth skillset in terms of understanding windows API's, drivers, vulnerabilities, reversing them, and finding UNIQUE exploits.

The UI developer, features implementation, all of that, although not difficult to learn, has to work in tandem with security. They are by no means "slouches" or do the short side of the work. So you already have that dynamic. And if you're not working directly with a security researcher or someone that understands how to find vulnerable drivers/exploits in BE to "bypass" (bypass is used wrongly when it comes to what it ACTUALLY means, what 99.999% of p2c's have are workarounds), then you're relying on a pasted vulnerability that other p2c's have and will likely be apart of large ban waves.

Lastly, as a real example, a close friend of mine is a senior software engineer and started off at a young age, many years ago, developing cheats for games. Back in the 90s. He partnered with someone to create a cheat, MANY YEARS AGO for EFT that, to this day has never been mentioned on this forum, has had maybe 5 bans in (as far as I know) the last 4-5ish years, and so on. When he went to go get a real job, he "sold" his half of the project for ~25k (so he claims - I have no reason not to trust him, but take everything I've stated with a grain of salt).

As mentioned in the quote, why would any security researcher or a very well researched software dev sell a unique, vulnerable driver exploit, to someone for 5k-10k? To even get in contact with such an individual is a task in and of itself and to say it bluntly, no one legitimate is going to reach out to you even though you are offering a 10k budget. You don't even understand the value of having such an exploit. Shit, I have met some of the individuals I've talked about in person and I still have never really asked them anything about their "precious driver(s)" or exploit - it's just something you understand in the "culture'.

A very adequate developer with many cheats, reputable, and well known, could even contact you. Ask for 5k. What a great deal! I promise you, you're only going to get what you paid for. A cheat you can call your own, an old or risky vulnerability that they have no use for, and a something with a short lifespan if you haven't hired a rather pricey dev that's constantly checking the BE shellcode, server sided changes from BSG on every update, and any mechanic changes made even on the client side. Even if you had that information, knowing what to do with it is another story.

[A.taxia]

Originally Posted by bugz b

To back this up, I, specifically, consider myself rather embedded in the EFT p2c community. I've not been around recently but still hold relationships with many individuals in the scene.

I am not only very close with but am staff/admin in many of the private channels of old UC Admins that have been running 20 slotted, undetected, and have implemented many of the features you find on the most expensive public p2c's you see now, years ago.

Just to give you a practical perspective - You will often find that AT THE MINIMUM, someone who is REALLY trying to create a long-term p2c that they want to build a community with is a developer themselves, or is going to hire the 2 necessary components: The security guy and the actual features guy. It's not always this black and white but security researchers often have a crazy in-depth skillset in terms of understanding windows API's, drivers, vulnerabilities, reversing them, and finding UNIQUE exploits.

The UI developer, features implementation, all of that, although not difficult to learn, has to work in tandem with security. They are by no means "slouches" or do the short side of the work. So you already have that dynamic. And if you're not working directly with a security researcher or someone that understands how to find vulnerable drivers/exploits in BE to "bypass" (bypass is used wrongly when it comes to what it ACTUALLY means, what 99.999% of p2c's have are workarounds), then you're relying on a pasted vulnerability that other p2c's have and will likely be apart of large ban waves.

Lastly, as a real example, a close friend of mine is a senior software engineer and started off at a young age, many years ago, developing cheats for games. Back in the 90s. He partnered with someone to create a cheat, MANY YEARS AGO for EFT that, to this day has never been mentioned on this forum, has had maybe 5 bans in (as far as I know) the last 4-5ish years, and so on. When he went to go get a real job, he "sold" his half of the project for ~25k (so he claims - I have no reason not to trust him, but take everything I've stated with a grain of salt).

As mentioned in the quote, why would any security researcher or a very well researched software dev sell a unique, vulnerable driver exploit, to someone for 5k-10k? To even get in contact with such an individual is a task in and of itself and to say it bluntly, no one legitimate is going to reach out to you even though you are offering a 10k budget. You don't even understand the value of having such an exploit. Shit, I have met some of the individuals I've talked about in person and I still have never really asked them anything about their "precious driver(s)" or exploit - it's just something you understand in the "culture'.

A very adequate developer with many cheats, reputable, and well known, could even contact you. Ask for 5k. What a great deal! I promise you, you're only going to get what you paid for. A cheat you can call your own, an old or risky vulnerability that they have no use for, and a something with a short lifespan if you haven't hired a rather pricey dev that's constantly checking the BE shellcode, server sided changes from BSG on every update, and any mechanic changes made even on the client side. Even if you had that information, knowing what to do with it is another story.

Well said tbh. I agree with most of the stuff but sometimes when there is demand devs like me are taking side jobs and it's pretty normal to take something around 5k and then money for keeping it updated and undetected. Ofcourse these days it's kinda harder to upkeep and check the anti-cheats shellcode because they are constantly evolving and even DMA is not a way anymore to be on top of top-tier AC like FaceIT or VGK, but if you kinda have solution you are willing to adapt to side projects it is still viable.