stigward talks us through how he got started in his career and how he made the shift to hacking professionally. He also gives advice on becoming a vulnerability researcher. He discusses interesting research and projects he works on, his favorite vulnerability research setup & more. The episode is full of tips and tricks that you can directly apply and learn from. This will be a gold mine for anyone experienced or just getting started in their security or game hacking career.

Who is Stigward

Stigward, aka Jack Maginnes, is the owner of the infamous exploits.club, an exclusive newsletter for exploit developers, vulnerability researchers, and hackers. He is also a long-time content creator on GuidedHacking, famously known for his "Writing Exploits for IoT N-Days," "Bug Hunting in Video Games," and other game hacking tutorials. Jack has earned a degree in Computer Science and has extensive experience in vulnerability research; he is currently working as a senior vulnerability researcher at Interrupt Labs. During this episode of the GuidedHacking Show, we will learn about Stigward's life, how to become a vulnerability researcher, what the future holds, and everything in between.

What is the Guided Hacking Show

The Guided Hacking Show is a podcast focused on game hacking and reverse engineering, we will primarily be interviewing prominent members of the game hacking and reverse engineering community, getting to know them and finding out what makes them tick.

Early Tech Influences and Technical Background​⁠

Stigward ⁠found interest in the computer world during middle and high school. He enjoyed programming and creating small video games. Jack studied computer science and got his first professional job as a backend developer. Around his sophomore and junior years, Jack's interest shifted towards security, especially since he always had a love for it. After graduation, Jack took roles in the IoT security world, working with hardware, bare-metal firmware, and embedded Linux systems. The experience gained allowed for a smooth transition into the world of vulnerability research.
The creation of exploits.club and bugs.directory​
Jack's notable project is exploits.club which is an exclusive newsletter for exploit developers, vuln researchers, and hackers, every week a newsletter is sent out, that contains the latest resources, articles, blogposts, job postings, and anything in between. Following exploits.club, Jack launched bugs.directory, which is a searchable Obsidian vault. Its main function is to serve as a collection of vulnerability research, exploit development, and reverse engineering resources to help you get spun up on new projects quickly. Initially, the database contains resources from the exploits.club newsletter; that being said, the vault is ⁠open-source⁠ so feel free to contribute.

Educational Content Creation​

Jack created multiple educational pieces for GuidedHacking, which we discussed in the podcast. From hacking Android games with Frida, bug hunting in video games, writing exploits for IoT N-days, to macOS game hacking in Rust, Jack has made significant contributions that can be found on ⁠GuidedHacking's⁠ YouTube channel and ⁠forum⁠.

The Future of Game Hacking​

Jack believes that game hacking is very suitable for someone looking to pursue vulnerability research professionally. He also mentions that the game hacking industry is becoming more complex. Jack highlights and discusses the infamous "⁠Bytecode Breakdown: Unraveling Factorio's Lua Security Flaws⁠" write-up, which is full of sophisticated content that reflects the level of sophistication the game hacking world can get.

What Nobody Tells You About Becoming a Vulnerability Researcher

In this episode, we learn about Nemi's journey—from how he got started, to building his anti-cheat solutions, and working at top gaming firms. We discuss the anti-cheat industry, the future of anti-cheat, and game integrity. During the episode, Nemi shares practical tips on professionally pursuing a career as a game hacker and answers some community questions. This episode is full with valuable insights and actionable advice for game hackers.

Who is Nemi?
​Nemanja Mulasmajic, also known as Nemi, is known for his work in developing Hyperion, an anti-cheat solution that was later acquired by Roblox. Nemi began his career in information security at the Department of Defense. However, he soon realized his passion for video games, which led him to transition into the gaming industry. He landed his first job at Blizzard Entertainment, where he built to anti-cheat systems that protected Overwatch. Nemi then joined Riot Games, where he built a new prevention and detection solution for League of Legends. Today, Nemi continues his work in security as part of the Roblox team.

Early Tech Influences and Technical Background​
Nemi was playing World of Warcraft in 2005 but couldn’t afford the monthly subscription. So, Nemi wanted to figure out how to play this game that everyone was playing. He started looking into World of Warcraft private servers, which gave him his start in this whole industry. Nemi began learning how to create private servers for World of Warcraft and learned a lot from the community. Later, Nemi pursued a computer science degree and landed a job in security at the Department of Defense. From there, he wanted to combine his love for the gaming industry and security. So, he applied to gaming studios, got rejected by Riot Games, but was accepted into Blizzard Entertainment. And, ladies and gentlemen, the rest is history.

Nemi's Public Contributions​
⁠BlackHat 2018 Talk: Why So Spurious? How a Highly Error-Prone x86/x64 CPU "Feature" Can Be Abused to Achieve Local Privilege Escalation on Many Operating Systems⁠⁠Systems and methods for anti-cheat detection Patent⁠⁠Nemis blog about general reverse engineering, security research, Windows internals, and system architecture.⁠
What led the creation of Byfron Technologies?​
After Vanguard shipped its anti-cheat, Nemi began contemplating what was next for him and how he could make a bigger impact in the gaming industry. Together with his co-founder at the time, Clint, they started brainstorming. Before leaving Riot, they pitched Riot's C-level executives the idea of productizing Riot's internal anti-cheat systems for the broader gaming industry. Unfortunately, their pitch was rejected. As a result, Nemi decided to leave and started Byfron, an anti-cheat company aimed at providing tools to the gaming industry. Byfron lasted for only about a year before being acquired by Roblox. During that time, they created Hyperion, a user-mode binary hardening tool designed to make reverse engineering games, detecting code injection, and other forms of tampering significantly more challenging.

The Future of Anticheat
​As discussed during the episode, Nemi says the future of anti-cheat will involve combining multiple layers, being platform-specific, and placing a significant focus on user trust. Any modern anti-cheat solution will need to be focused on prevention, detection, and deterrence. Kernel-mode anti-cheats are becoming increasingly common. Additionally, hardware based solutions like ⁠TPM ⁠are expected to grow in importance, potentially leading to queue segregation, where players with stronger security setups are placed in trusted environments. Watch the full episode to learn more!

GuidedHacking Byfron Thread​
https://guidedhacking.com/threads/robloxs-byfron-anti-cheat-a-new-era-of-fair-play.20369/

Connect with Nemi​
https://x.com/0xNemi
https://www.linkedin.com/in/0xnemi/

Roblox Anti-Cheat Engineer and Ex-Founder of Hyperion Anti-Cheat Explains It All

In this first video episode, we start by exploring the history of the Back.Engineering team, how they met and got started. Then the real talk begins, as we dive into topics like binary rewriting, obfuscation, deobfuscation, compilers, and mixed boolean arithmetic. We also discuss the approach the team took to build CodeDefender, the limitations of existing tools on the market such as VMProtect, and how their solution differs. Watch this episode to learn about all the cool stuff you won’t typically find properly documented online!

Who is the Back.Engineering team?​The ⁠Back.Engineering⁠ team specializes in reverse engineering, tool development, software de obfuscation, and obfuscation techniques. They built CodeDefender, a solution that protects software against tampering, exploitation, and reverse engineering while preserving stability, performance, and compatibility with modern Windows security mechanisms.

The team:
⁠Christopher Drumm⁠ – CEO & Founder⁠Bas Zweers⁠ – Compiler Engineer⁠James McGowan⁠ – Security Researcher (focused on obfuscation)


What is CodeDefender​
CodeDefender is a SaaS offering by the ⁠Back.Engineering⁠ team that provides protection against tampering, exploitation, and reverse engineering, while also ensuring stability, performance, and compatibility with modern Windows security mechanisms. Stability is core to CodeDefender's philosophy. 


Some of CodeDefender's notable features 
include mathematically robust obfuscation (which we discussed in the episode ), program hardening, and anti-tamper capabilities such as page encryption, API tampering detection, and byte patching prevention. Finally, CodeDefender offers binary diversification, allowing it to randomize the binary, thwart signature detection, automatically encrypt data, and obfuscate imports for enhanced security.

Technical Capabilities of CodeDefender
​Chris, Bas, and James are really at the top of their game. They have implemented so many capabilities into CodeDefender like novel code coverage techniques, and proper exception handling enables seamless use of try/except blocks, eliminating the need for manual marking in your code. Most software protectors on the market struggle to support Control flow Enforcement Technology (CET), with many sacrificing SEH support. Unlike most other software protectors, they proudly support Control Flow Guard (CFG) to enhance your application's security. They have also built advanced obfuscation techniques that fully support Arbitrary Code Guard (ACG). We have discussed lots of the technical details in our episode!


The TRUE Story Behind BACK.ENGINEERING's Bin2Bin REVOLUTION

GuidedHacking is the best resource to learn reverse engineering, game hacking, malware analysis, exploit development and ethical hacking. We sell 11 courses, we have 440+ video tutorials, thousands of text tutorials, thousands of source codes & more.

We provide tutorials in text and video format teaching all forms of game modding including the basic programming in C++, Usage of applications such as Cheat Engine, IDA Pro, x64dbg etc..., Basic disassembly of portable executable files, General reverse engineering practices, Graphic APIs such as OpenGL and Direct3D and anything else you might need to learn.

Guided Hacking has been the #1 Source for Learning Game Hacking Since 2011, but we have recently moved into the information security space, adding malware analysis, ethical hacking, exploit development and much more to our catalog of content.

What Nobody Tells You About Becoming a Vulnerability Researcher

GuidedHacking

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