The Anti-Cheat Arms Race
The sharpest offensive-security cat-and-mouse right now isn’t in a SOC. It’s in gaming. Hardware that reads memory the OS can’t see, and input bridges that make a bot look human. Same primitives as any DMA attack or HID-spoofing teardown, just pointed at a shooter.
◆ Studied as a defender. I take this apart to understand how endpoint protection actually fails, not to ship cheats.
Captain DMA 75T
An Artix-7 FPGA card that reads a target machine’s RAM straight over PCIe at ~200MB/s, a hardware memory-access attack the CPU and kernel anti-cheat never see.
MAKCU input bridge
Dual ESP32-S3 passthrough sitting between mouse and PC. A second machine computes the aim; MAKCU replays it as genuine HID input that looks perfectly human.
The two-PC cheat, explained
DMA card streams game memory to a 2nd PC → it builds ESP/aim → the bridge injects the moves back. Nothing runs on the gaming PC, so kernel anti-cheat is blind. Origin: Ulf Frisk’s PCILeech.
The Bench
Things I’ve made, and builds from around the internet that live in my head rent-free.
The bench gnome
Site supervisor. Reviews every solder joint through the goggles, approves nothing on the first revision. Gnomish in spirit was never a metaphor.
Varmilo VEA88 Moonlight
The daily driver, a Moonlight-colourway TKL: charcoal case, two-tone grey caps, cyan on Esc, Enter and the spacebar.
Singing Tesla coil
A musical solid-state Tesla coil that plays chiptunes in raw plasma. The 2007 Teslathon Mario duet that started it all.
Desktop CNC mill
Aluminum-frame router for PCBs and enclosures. Endless calibration, worth it.
Self-balancing cube
ETH Zurich’s Cubli, a reaction-wheel inverted pendulum that jumps up, balances on a corner, and walks.
Gear-driven desk lamp
Brass planetary gears driving an articulated bioluminescent lamp arm.
Marsh-light controller
ESP32 + addressable LEDs reacting to ambient sound. Powers the shelf glow.