Top 20 worldwide with social-engineering and a cheat that's still undetected (ud2.rip)

A recent project has unveiled a sophisticated cheat for Vertical Scrolling Rhythm Games (VSRGs) like osu!mania, using a combination of mathematics and reinforcement learning. This cheat, which does not rely on game-specific code, enables a trained model to read scrolling notes and produce perfectly timed keystrokes, allowing the user to achieve a top 20 global ranking in osu! before facing a ban. The intriguing aspect of this incident is that the creators managed to gain the trust of the community, with several top players vouching for them without realizing they were interacting with a bot. The significance of this development lies in its demonstration that the primary challenge of cheating in such competitive environments is not just technical evasion of anti-cheat software but also the social engineering required to blend in. The project utilized data from thousands of player replays to model human-like behaviors, revealing how top players exhibit consistent patterns of timing and error. This cheat highlights the potential for machine learning techniques to mimic human nuances, raising important ethical questions about integrity in esports and the sophistication of modern cheat detection efforts.