Troll Trapping Through TAS Tools: Exposing Speedrunning Cheaters
Forensic detection techniques using Tool-Assisted Speedrun recording quirks and input analysis to catch video game leaderboard cheaters.
Summary
Cheating via Tool Assisted Speedruns
Trolls cheating in video games by passing Tool-Assisted Speedruns off as human effort break leaderboards and stifle speedrunners. Why do they do it when they could make a cool game hack or TAS to show off their work, and how do you trap these trolls? The answer is to use their own tools against them, often with popcorn bucket worthy results like taking down Guinness World Records. From a TASVideos member taking on 1980's Dragster cheat Todd Rogers, a passing mention of Billy Mitchell, and the TASBot team investigating Super Mario Maker shenanigans, this talk covers several notable cheating incidents and concludes with a systematic takedown of a troll that chilled the Diablo speedrunning community for more than a decade.
Input Analysis and Timing Artifacts
This talk includes several investigations I have been a part of in some capacity and will ultimately include additional references in the coming months; I've broken the references out by game, presented in Markdown format like the rest of this document:
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