Defqon 24: On the trail of Diablo cheaters

Alan Cecil aka “DwangoAC” makes every effort to expose speedrun fraud. At the Defcon 24 hacker conference in Las Vegas, Cecil explained how to catch cheaters. He questioned the speedrun record of Diablo 1, which even made it into the Guinness Book. In his talk, Cecil explained his suspicions of fraud against the existing record. Alan believes that the speedrun record of Diablo 1, which has stood since 2009, can only be based on violations of the rules. He showed what clues and testing methods to use to uncover speedrun fraud.

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The goal of a speedrunner is to reach certain levels, complete races or levels of difficulty in as little time as possible. This is the fastest single game playthrough in Diablo 1 According to the entry in Guinness World Records At 3 minutes and 12 seconds. The game Diablo is a classic game from American game developer Blizzard Entertainment, which has now been released in several parts. Diablo 1 was first released in 1996 for PC, Mac and PlayStation. Diablo 4, the last part at the moment, was released on June 6, 2023.

Tired fraud

If the fraud can be proven, it will be the second case this year that he and his team have proven. However, so far he has only been able to provide credible evidence for his suspicions to the audience. His lecture “Diablo 1 World Record Speedrun Exposed” is available on YouTube,

Before the conference Cecil had already made his specific doubts about the Diablo 1 record public on Wired and mentioned a planned Defcon 24 lecture. He recognized cheaters’ efforts at perfection and timing as an independent accomplishment. “Creating a tool-assisted speedrun is a transformative work of art that people spend months or years working on,” Cecil told Wired.

Cecil, known in the gaming world as DwangoC, found his way into the unusual role of speedrun exposure through a typical hobby. As a specialist in tool-assisted speedruns, he uses emulator software to test and analyze games in a controlled environment.

(US)