Valve used secret memory access “honeypot” to detect 40K Dota 2 cheaters

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of Valve’s anti-cheat tentacles rising up to catch those caught by its memory honeypot. (credit: Valve)

The cat-and-mouse battle between game makers and cheat makers has seen plenty of inventive twists and turns over the years. Even amid that backdrop, though, Dota 2 stands out for a recently revealed “honeypot” trap hidden inside the game’s memory buffer.

In a blog post this week, Valve revealed the existence of this trap, which was released as part of an earlier update to the game. Valve says that update included “a section of data inside the game client that would never be read during normal gameplay.” But that memory could be read by third-party cheat tools that used exploits to sniff out (and share) internal data normally invisible to players.

To activate its honeypot trap, all Valve had to do was watch for any accounts that tried to read from that “secret” memory area, an event that would lead to “extremely high confidence that every ban was well-deserved,” according to Valve.