Michail Greshishchev is a software engineer with a passion for reverse engineering. His career revolves around software reliability and safety critical systems.
In his spare time, he enjoys disassembly, static and dynamic analysis of software and hardware, indie game development and working on machine learning projects.
His recent accomplishments were contributing a security analysis framework to Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), enabling automotive manufacturers to protect future cars from cyber-attacks, and winning a US Navy CTF hacking competition in Austin, Texas. Presently, he is a product owner at Denuvo.
We caught up with Greshishchev to talk about cheating, reverse engineering and the unification of gaming.
PocketGamer.biz: Can you tell us a bit about Denuvo?
Michail Greshishchev: Acquired by Irdeto in 2018, Denuvo is the global number one games protection and anti-piracy technology platform, with 350+ million software licenses issued and revalidated.
Irdeto is the world leader in digital platform security, protecting platforms and applications for video entertainment, video games, connected transport and IoT connected industries. Irdeto’s solutions and services enable customers to protect their revenue, create new offerings and fight cybercrime.
What does your role entail?
I'm leading Denuvo’s battle against online cheating. With 20 years of cheat development experience, and 11 years of developing software security solutions, my reverse engineering and application architecture experience has been key in building the next generation cheat detection solution - Denuvo Anti-Cheat.
Why did you want to work in the games industry?
Gaming is my hobby, and software security is my career. Denuvo offered the perfect marriage of expertise and passion, giving me an opportunity to positively impact the very thing he enjoys daily.
What advice would you give to anyone wanting to get into it?
The games industry is incredibly challenging and equally rewarding. Whatever your aspirations in the gaming industry might be, excel at it – and that starts with your portfolio, tech demo, or open source contributions.
What major trends do you predict in the next 12 months?
The unification of console and desktop platform technologies is bringing gaming to an unprecedented era of cross-play.
From the normalization of hypervisor use in gaming, homogenization of x86 and graphics hardware, to the increased focus on cloud services, cross-play has never had a lower barrier to entry than today.
Which part of the Connects event are you most looking forward to and why?
I am looking forward to discussing the challenges of cheating and piracy with the great range of industry stakeholders in attendance and hearing from the many thought leaders that are scheduled to speak.
Could you tell us a bit more about your session?
As long as there have been games, there have been cheaters! Video games are no exception. The last year brought some creative and impressive multiplayer cheats on popular titles and we want to share them with you.
In this session, I'll discuss three top clever cheats, including on big esports titles, and why they weren't detected. I'll also reveal the hard facts and figures into just how destructive cheating is to the industry from our market survey.
At Pocket Gamer Connects London 2020, Michail Greshishchev will be holding a session called "Aimbots to wallhacks: Three of the most clevers cheats of recent years". For more information, and to book your tickets for the event, click here.
