Experimental CS:GO Exploit
My Exploit
I have a couple paragraphs below going in depth about hacking in Counter Strike. Click here to read
Since the game got redeployed, I am currently working on remaking my old cheat for the new version of Counter Strike 2.
Ever since I ran into a cheater in my own game back in 2018, I decided to join the "hack vs hack" community. I was a QA at Aimware doing website maintainence and beta testing, along with writing Lua scripts that enhance the exploit. I created this exploit for fun and to learn more about reverse engineering.
Aim-bot Demo
On click, the exploit will aim on the enemy's head.
Vision Assistance / ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) Demo
Allows user to see through terrain. Also shows enemy health and weapon equipped.
Anti-aim Demo
Allows the user's model to spin incredibly fast.
Also used Aim-bot to shoot enemies and Vision Assistance to view the game in third person.
What is Counter Strike?
Counter Strike Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment. In CS:GO, players are divided into two teams: terrorists and counter-terrorists. The game is known for its competitive gameplay and has several modes, but the most popular involves the terrorists attempting to plant a bomb while the counter-terrorists try to stop them. Alternatively, the counter-terrorists may be tasked with rescuing hostages captured by the terrorists.
What is "cheating"?
However, many people in this game like to cheat through external applications that manipulate the game, giving the user an extreme advantage. There are cheaters that try to blend in as non-cheaters and use their exploit very subtly giving them a slight up edge so they have a low chance of being banned, this is called "legit-cheating". Then there are cheaters who blantantly cheat, making complete robotic movements, giving real players no chance, this is called "raging". The three major aspect of the game that are being manipulated are, aim, vision, and movement.
Aim-bot/aim-assist helps the user aim hence the name. A good exploit can tune the power of the aim-bot to the users wishes. A legit-cheater would set their settings so that their aim wouldn't look as robotic so their gameplay looks legit. A rager would do the opposite and try to optimize their settings, so that their aim-bot is perfect.
Vision enhancement/ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) allows the user to see things they normally shouldn't. Usually, one shouldn't be able to see through a hard surface in the game, however, vision enhancements allow you to do so. It could even provide more details of your enemy, like; weapon type, health, bullets left, etc.
Movement enhancement allows the user to abuse movement mechanics perfectly. One of my favourite things of Counter Strike is it movement physics. Performing the right actions and timing while jumping can accelerate your speed making gameplay very fast paced. The exploit simply allows you to perform this at will.
What is "hvh" (hack vs hack)
In Counter Strike, there exists a community where the game is played out normally, but every user is equipped with their own exploit. The rules of Counter Strike aren't changed, but now we have cheaters fighting against cheaters hence the name hack vs hack.
How do you win? You would assume that having an exploit would mean you are practically god and unkillable, however, that is wrong. How exploits work in Counter Strike is through the manipulation of game variables, such as; player position or environment physics. It is not like executing a command that would instantly kill an opponent conditionlessly. To win there usually 4 factors in play:
Aim-bot
To aim and shoot someone, you have to account for recoil and movement inaccuracy. The physics of the game doesn't allow you to shoot and move at the same time without inaccuracy. So in the settings of one's exploit, they can choose to adjust their hit-chance% allowing the exploit to make decision whether it should take the shot.
Another factor to consider is the mininum amount of damage you want to deal in order to take the shot. For example, a headshot is lethal most of the time, so you could set it to prioritizing going for a headshot. However, this isn't always optimal as it's possible for the other persons head to be hidden while other there are exposed body parts, as well as having a higher possibility of missing due to the small hit-box of the head. You must also consider for shooting through walls.
Put together, one must make a configuration that performs optimally in any given scenario.
Anti-aim
This feature basically make you harder to aim at. This feature is only useful against other cheaters as it tries to make it harder for the opponent's exploit to hit you. An example of anti-aim is shaking your model extremely fast. Another example is to always hide you head, that's why most cheaters are just looking straight down.
Anti-aim can also come with "de-sync", where you create a ghost model of yourself slightly offset from your real model. You exploit tries to tell the game that your ghost model isn't real, however, most cheats come with something called an "resolver" where it detects your ghost model and shoots your real one. A bad resolver would shoot your fake.
Packet-Manipulation
Now this is an more advanced factor to consider. Since the game as been redeployed as Counter Strike 2, a lot of old features may not exist in todays game. However in the old version of Counter Strike, you could do crazy things like; fake-lag, shoot twice in one bullet, and fake-crouch. This is sometimes the difference maker between good and bad cheats.
Scripts
Most well known cheats have a scripting system where you can use files to manipulate settings in your exploit. For example Aimware uses Lua as their scripting lanaguage. This can be very effective since the values you set your hit-chance and min-dmg at are static, but a script could make it dynamic and adaptive to the given scenario. It can also enhance visuals and serve as macros.