Lastest Riot Vanguard Update Can Brick Your Hardware (If You're a Cheater)
Riot Games‘ kernel-level anti-cheat, Vanguard, has received an update that is allegedly altering system firmware to remove the ability of the user to access certain hardware associated with cheating.
Riot Games quoted one post discussing the anti-cheat, replying “congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight.” But how exactly does Vanguard’s new system make “paperweights” out of hardware?
https://insider-gaming.com/lastest-riot-vanguard-update-can-brick-your-hardware-if-youre-a-cheater/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Cheating or not, if they destroy property, it's illegal and unethical.
Good thing they didn't then. Nothing was actually bricked, people are misusing the term.
Still way too much access. Lock them out of the fucking kernel.
I agree. I'm not saying kernel level anti-cheat is acceptable, but the reporting on this has been a disaster. Making things up to try to make them look worse doesn't actually help anyone.
This is what cheaters do, unfortunately. Misreporting about Vanguard happened even on the first day of its release.
does non-kernal level anticheat work anymore if basically all cheaters operate at the kernel level at this point?
Just another reason for me to avoid these types of games. These systems are notorious of false positives and bricking a users system, cheating or not, is going away too far and why they should never be allowed that level of access.
If they brick your system, is it a fair response to brick their CEO and company property? I feel like that's the recourse here.
I'd like a CEO paperweight. Literally just a chunk of its body as weight.
So just a CEO?
It doesn't brick any hardware at all.
They're using the IOMMU page table enforcement hardware (VT-d/AMD-Vi) to block DMA access to specific areas of memory.
This press coverage is largely just Valorant tooting their own horn. It will block the current generation of DMA hardware but there are several ways to bypass the IOMMU enforcement via hardware.
So, they simply rendered the current generation of DMA hardware obsolete. There will be new DMA cheats pretending to be Thunderbolt 4 controller devices (which are trusted to do their own IOMMU enforcement) or a PCI-e ATS device.
if I'm reading this right there's no hardware damage at all, the "paperweight" comment just means they've successfully mitigated against a specific device, rendering it useless for this purpose, but it still works as intended against vulnerable games.
Kind of a nothing burger honestly, if I'm understanding right. Scary that they have that much access tho, which is the real problem, since they're leaving a whole bunch of other peoples' front doors wide open
I didn't want to play these games anyway. You dont have to keep convincing me not to, riot.
Why the fuck would anyone install kernel level back doors on their systems just baffles me.
Isn't this illegal?
No, because it's misreported. Nothing was bricked.
(if you're a cheater) [or if the algorithm gets something wrong]
Even if I am not a cheater, knowing what powers Riot have over my PC would be unacceptable. Its like saying the government is allowed to look what you are doing on PC, and you I need to worry because I am not a criminal. No game and its company should have this much power over my system. It's just a fucking videogame!