Here’s an alternative version so you can really appreciate the majesty of this dude’s belly.
That’s the fusion reactor of that gator-kicking machine.
Also the docile look on the companion gator makes me want to caption him. Except I have no immediate ideas and am short on time, so I’ll just pretend he’s a socially anxious gator doing a ‘count to 10’ meditation and thinking to himself, ‘Come on GatorGreg, you can do this, you deserve to be in this space as much as anyone else, like your GatorTherapist said. Just breathe.’
i’m desperate to know the context of this photo, and if i’m correct that it’s in florida
It’s an AI-generated photo and it became a small-time meme some months back.
That is shockingly good for being generated. I can’t spot a single giveaway. If you don’t count the ridiculous scenario, that is.
I’ve quit riot, blizzard, ea, activition, ubisoft, and now sony. There are so many incredible games to play out there and I don’t need to waste my time with publishers I can’t trust.
You’ll be back for Bloodborne remastered and Bloodborne 2.
You’ll all be back.
“Beloved by all” Don’t be so hasty. I wish I could love games with kernel level anti cheats, but there are far better games with less risky software.
It’s a really fun game though so idk I don’t care (about the privacy concerns, your opinion is valid regardless)
It’s not just privacy. Kernel level anti cheat software opens up a new attack vector for malicious actors, e.g. your computer is less secure. Your system also becomes less stable and is prone to crash more often. This is all dependent on the skill of the software engineers writing the kernel level anti cheat of course.
Unfortunately, most software, if not most of modern IT is a house of cards.
Kernel level anticheat software opens up a new attack vector for malicious actors
This is one of my favorite techniques used by threat actors.
Essentially, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the BYOVDD technique, code is signed by companies when it is set to publish. This signature is proof that the company actually released the code, and generally, if the code is signed by someone you trust, it means that it doesn’t contain malware.
However, programmers are often bad about writing secure code. Security is hard, and kernel-level code is complex, so things slip through the cracks and the code becomes vulnerable to exploitation from the threat actor.
The fun part is when there is signed code that operates at the kernel level. To an OS and many security systems, signed code is good code. If a threat actor exploits signed code to arbitrarily do things like download and execute malware, or just behave maliciously, security software often throws up its hands and goes “Well, it is signed by a trusted company, it’s probably fine lol.” But because this code operates at such a privileged level, the amount of damage that can be done is devastating.
This was used in 2022 by threat actors to spread ransomware. The vulnerable kernel-level software they used was Genshin Impact’s anticheat.
Thankfully, crafting an exploit like this is pretty difficult to do, and since the signatures used for the code is revoked when malicious activity is seen, it is unlikely that you will see this specific technique used against you on your personal computer. But your IT and/or cybersecurity team might see the Helldivers anticheat used to ransom their systems sometime in the future.
Not to mention Sony itself has been busted multiple times installing goddamn rootkits
I’m sorry to tell you this but once code has arbitrary code execution on your local device it’s already over, installing an anti cheat that is 100% necessary in today’s gaming landscape doesn’t change that at all. Name a single game with non verbal anti cheat that matters in 2024.
Honestly, they also enshitified it at launch by shipping alongside a rootkit.
The Helldiver 2 game shipped with a kernel level anticheat software, which is proven to be potentially harmful to player’s computers but fairly ineffective against preventing cheating/hacking. The concept behind it is that a program that runs when your computer starts up with the highest level of privileges can see everything that the user is running which could hypothetically help the devs blacklist problematic programs that they’re already aware of.
Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?
And people are still buying and installing it in their computer? I don’t care if it’s the best game in the history of mankind, if it’s require kernel level access, it ain’t gonna be on my PC.
Sony has been fucking over the AAA gaming market for at least 20 years now.
