Quick POC after seeing a post about games detecting Discord group chat names.
This isn’t new, I just spun this up for my own testing and figured I’d share it.
I wanted to see if browser tab titles get checked too and turns out they do!
Some games (like Fortnite) will immediately kick you just for having a tab open in the background with certain titles.
What this does
This page just repeatedly changes document.title to common debugger / reverse engineering tool names like:
- x64dbg
- Cheat Engine
- IDA
- Ghidra
You can also put in your own values if you want to test other tools.
How this actually works
Games like Fortnite run anti-cheat checks looking for known tools (debuggers, cheat engines, etc.) on your system.
At a basic level they seem to:
- Enumerate open windows / processes
- Read window titles
- Match against flagged keywords
Browsers include the tab title in the window title:
<tab title> - Mozilla Firefox
<tab title> - Google Chrome
So when this page runs:
document.title = "x64dbg"
Your system ends up with a window title like:
x64dbg - Mozilla Firefox
From the game’s point of view, that looks like a debugger.
So:
- It sees a flagged string
- Assumes something is running
- Kicks you (or worse, depending on the game)
Even if:
- The tab is in the background
- You never touched it
- The tool isn’t installed
Demo
Try it here: https://research.elliott.diy/fea9d209
Open it, hit start, then launch a game.
Affected games
| Game | Kick | Ban | App |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fortnite | Yes | No | x64dbg |
Send a PR if you find more games that hate browser tabs.