Among Us has gained great fame and is loved by millions of players around the world. However, it seems that it has also attracted the attention of hackers who often create problems in the game.
James Sebree, a researcher at security firm Tenable, published a study on Tuesday detailing a series of relatively simple vulnerabilities in Among Us that he discovered over the past two months that allow cheaters to enter the game. Some of them break the game's core mechanics, allowing cheaters to kill other players at will, impersonate other players, teleport within the game, walk through walls, supercharge their character's speed, control other players' movements, obtain free in-game items, ban users from participating without such privileges, and play themselves even if they're blocked.
Sebree said he began digging into the code in late September, with the goal of modifying it to allow more than the default 10 players. But he soon realized that the potential for changing the game was much greater.
The errors , Sebree says, are due to the servers not being designed to validate information sent by the client running on players' computers, a basic protection found in popular PC games.
Of course, Sebree isn't the first to hack Among Us. Players have been complaining about hacking and cheating in the game since at least early October. Some players were also hit with spam messages about Trump in mid-October.
Innersloth , the developer of Among Us, told WIRED that it is looking into these issues. Sebree says he tried to contact Innersloth repeatedly in mid-October to share his findings, but did not receive a response. He notes that some of the hacks that were flagged have since been fixed, such as changing the character's color, instantly identifying the cheater, or killing other players.
With Innersloth only having three people, it’s perhaps not surprising that it doesn’t have the resources to discover and patch every vulnerability in the game in a timely manner, says Sebree. He argues that the kind of fundamental bugs he discovered are to be expected in games like Among Us, which are built by a team of developers, using tools like the Unity engine to lower the barriers to game building.
Sebree admitted, however, that the security vulnerabilities he discovered in Among Us do not pose a serious threat to users. They do not, for example, allow access to anything on a targeted player's computer beyond the boundaries of the game. Sebree hopes that with some software fixes, the game's developers will be able to curb cheaters and provide a better experience for their players.
