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Warden isn't a static binary anti-cheat — it's a remote code execution framework.
I've been digging into how Warden handles WoW Retail under Proton-GE/Linux. The server pushes encrypted scan modules at runtime, which are decrypted and executed in memory. Since the scanning logic updates server-side without a client patch, it's a moving target.
Memory Layout & Dumps
When active, I identified several anonymous RWX memory regions. The loader (172KB at 0x13470000) is the only region containing actual executable code. The rest, including an 18MB workspace, are ciphertext (Shannon entropy ~7.1+).
The Loader Core
The loader implements a custom format rather than a standard PE. It uses a "jmp +8" trick in the header to bypass validation logic.
Runtime & Wine Notes
It’s event-driven, triggered by port 3724 traffic. It remains idle in pselect6 until the server sends a scan request. Interestingly, Wine's PEB implementation is transparent enough that Warden enumerates built-in DLLs without flagging them as foreign, which is a massive oversight on their end.
It operates entirely in userspace via memory reading and hash computation; no weird syscalls needed. This makes it a nightmare to intercept without a robust handle on the server-side trigger events.
Anyone else mapping these specific memory regions or finding consistent ways to trigger/suppress these scan modules?
I've been digging into how Warden handles WoW Retail under Proton-GE/Linux. The server pushes encrypted scan modules at runtime, which are decrypted and executed in memory. Since the scanning logic updates server-side without a client patch, it's a moving target.
Memory Layout & Dumps
When active, I identified several anonymous RWX memory regions. The loader (172KB at 0x13470000) is the only region containing actual executable code. The rest, including an 18MB workspace, are ciphertext (Shannon entropy ~7.1+).
The Loader Core
The loader implements a custom format rather than a standard PE. It uses a "jmp +8" trick in the header to bypass validation logic.
- __chkstk: Standard MSVC stack probe for guard pages.
- Memset: SSE2-optimized implementation for zeroing section memory.
- Warden_load_module: Main function resolving imports via PEB walking.
The loader walks the PEB linked lists to resolve modules, identical to standard shellcode behavior. It avoids plaintext strings by using FNV-1a hashing with SIMD-accelerated UTF-16 to ASCII conversion:
Code:
pand xmm0, xmm7 ; mask with 0x00FF — strips high bytes
packuswb xmm0, xmm1 ; pack 16 words into 16 bytesRuntime & Wine Notes
It’s event-driven, triggered by port 3724 traffic. It remains idle in pselect6 until the server sends a scan request. Interestingly, Wine's PEB implementation is transparent enough that Warden enumerates built-in DLLs without flagging them as foreign, which is a massive oversight on their end.
It operates entirely in userspace via memory reading and hash computation; no weird syscalls needed. This makes it a nightmare to intercept without a robust handle on the server-side trigger events.
Anyone else mapping these specific memory regions or finding consistent ways to trigger/suppress these scan modules?
