How Cheat Engine Works & How to Use It for Hacking

As most of you know, Cheat Engine is primarily used for hacking games, but we will see that there is quite a bit more to it than just games.

What is Cheat Engine?

Cheat Engine is an open-source program designed to help you to modify single player games, in order for you to make them harder or easier depending on your choice. For example, If 50 Health Points make a particular game too easy to play, you can try playing the game with a maximum of 5 Health Points as a challenge. Cheat Engine also includes few other useful tools used for debugging and really just messing around with games or other applications. For example, as a prank, you can change the download speed shown in a torrent or client download manager to 50 Gbps, or something like that.

Cheat Engine comes with a memory scanner to instantly scan for variables used within a game, and allows you to modify them. Some of the other features included in Cheat Engine are: Debugger, Disassembler, Assembler, Speed hack, Direct 3D manipulation tools, Trainer maker, System inspection tools, etc. It is the ultimate tool for a playful programmer. Let's find out how Cheat Engine does it.

How Cheat Engine Works

Even though Cheat Engine can do quite a bit more, let’s see an example of it hacking a game. Every single application installed on your computer uses variables to store various values. In a particular game, for example, the player’s health points, level, position, ammunition – literally everything, is saved in certain variables. There could be a separate variable with values 0-50 which keeps track of health points, another variable keeps track of what level the player is currently in, and probably three more which keep track of the X,Y,Z coordinates of the player in a 3D game.

Most of the games run in cycles, and what I mean by that is that the game has a repeating loop of a particular function going on and on until the user exits the game. Inside the loop, the function’s code checks to see if all of the player activities have occurred. For example, if the player pressed the arrow keys the function's code updates their position accordingly. If the player clicked the left mouse button, it decreases ammo by one and calls the function to launch a bullet from the gun, and so on. Certain aspects of a game often depend entirely on a specific variable and use it to maintain a legit value. To consider that the average player may not even know about the existence of these variables running in the background, is a safe bet for the game developer. This is what makes almost every single player game vulnerable to tricky software such as Cheat Engine.

The reason why Cheat Engine doesn't work for most of the big online games, like RuneScape or World of Warcraft, is because the data and any changes done to it are always double-checked within the server’s copy. Everything that happens on the server stays on the server, and even though you can make yourself look like a pro, it will be only because of your browser. Like all applications, your browser also preserves variables which can be altered, but that does not influence the server’s copy.

What Cheat Engine does is it tries to find out what variables the application uses, the address where they are stored in the RAM and perhaps alter them according to what the user may want. For gamers, this program is simply god-sent. You can get infinite ammunition in “Call of Duty”, increase your speed in “Need for speed”, or typing cheat codes for extra money in “GTA” and so much more.

Cheat Engine and Hacking

You may ask yourself, how does any of this relates to hacking? It is all about an experience. Cheat Engine teaches you how to find out vulnerabilities and how to solve them. Cheat Engine gives you the fun and thrill of cracking seemingly impossible difficulties and teaches you how to look for an open window when the door is closed – which is indeed a very precise definition of hacking. Cheat Engine gives you a hint, a glimpse of advanced hacking strategies.

In my experience I have noticed that the main reason why beginners give up early while they learn hacking is simply because it just gets a little boring. Outside of movies, that is just the way it is. But for those willing to make the journey, the reward is more than worth it. To truly enjoy using Cheat Engine you have to be to some extent a gamer. Hacking rely upon practice, because only practice can give you the experience needed to truly hack like those guys you see in the movies. Cheat Engine is nowhere close to a professional hacking program, but it is a step in the right direction, and above all, it is fun. For the programmers, as I mentioned before Cheat Engine is open-source, It is all out there waiting for you to explore.

This article was intended to be an introduction to Cheat Engine since it comes packed up with its own finest tutorial for its usage. For beginners I recommend going through the Cheat Engine tutorial, and to see for yourself

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Here to download Cheatengine Software