Video Game Hacks, Cheats, and Glitches

Explore the fascinating world of video game hacks, cheats, and glitches in this 44-minute conference talk by Ron Bowes at NorthSec. Discover how Ron built his security career by writing cheats for video games, particularly focusing on creative ways to manipulate Starcraft during his high school years. Examine major hacks, cheats, and glitches in various games, from famous examples like arbitrary code execution in Super Mario World to obscure ones such as building stacking in Starcraft. Learn how these gaming exploits relate to modern security vulnerabilities, drawing parallels between the Legend of Zelda "bottle glitch" and type-confusion vulnerabilities that could lead to remote code execution in real-world software. Gain insights into the history of both video game cheating and real-world security vulnerabilities, covering topics such as interoperability, pirate servers, DNS compression, ASCII characters, map hacking, emulation bots, clientside trust, ActiveX vulnerabilities, assembly code manipulation, and injection techniques. Understand the importance of learning ethical hacking and its applications in the broader field of cybersecurity.