Valorant's anti-cheat software has been 'uncovered' - Will Riot get yelled at?

Many gamers are "firing" at Riot because the Vanguard anti-cheat software that Riot created for Valorant proved suspicious, is that anger worth it?

Vanguard and Valorant

In recent days, Riot's Valorant game has caused a new 'phenomenon' in the gaming community in general and in the players of this game in particular. It all started when a gamer stepped into the Reddit forum to announce his discovery that after installing Valorant, the game's anti-cheat software called Vanguard will automatically run whenever the player opens the computer. , shown by the boot process of vgk.sys in the gamer. It runs even if the player doesn't open Valorant, and ignores technical terms, you can simply understand that it runs at the 'kernel driver' level and can be a potential risk. Museum for gamers' computers.

After this discovery was announced, a Riot employee, nick RiotArkem, appeared to explain the problem. According to him, the vgk.sys launch before the Vanguard player opens is a good way to prevent fraud because one of the games bypassing the anticheat software is opening the cheat before opening the game. In addition, Riot hired outside cybersecurity companies to assess Vanguard's safety before putting it into the game. It also does not collect or send any information from users to the Riot server and gamers can remove it at any time by removing 'Riot Vanguard' in the Add / Remove Programs section of Windows.

However, Riot's explanation did not please all gamers (or they could not read it) and led to a wave of scolding Riot, cursing Tencent on social networks. I don't discuss the legitimacy of these behaviors, but I want to give you some more information on how the most popular anti-cheat software works. The main problem with Vanguard is that it starts up as soon as the computer is turned on, when the player has not opened Valorant and therefore is considered a threat by gamers. However, you may be surprised to learn that Vanguard is not the only software that does this.

What other names are there?

First of all, gamers who have plowed the FPS hoe on the cyber battlefield for a long time must know the anti-cheat software Punkbuster . It is used in nearly 30 different games from EA, Activision such as Call of Duty (1, 2, 4, World At War), Battlefield (2, 2142, 3, 1942, 4, Hardline, Bad Company 2, Heroes, .), Medal of Honor (2010, 2012), Rainbow Six, . This software also runs on the Kernel level like Riot's Vanguard - you can verify this when looking for a process called PnkBstrK.sys in your device. mine.

The punkbuster used by Medal of Honor is similar to Vanguard.

Vietnamese gamers playing Counter Strike or Raid will also be familiar with similar anti-cheat software running in the background. They have gone through Faceit, ESEA, Xigncode3 - all of them are software running at the same core level as Vanguard. Easy Anti Cheat (being used by Ghost Recon Wildlands, Gears 5, Hunt Showdown, The Division 2, Fortnite, Apex Legends) and Battleye (PUBG, DayZ, Ark, Bless, Escape from Tarkov, Ghost Recon Breakpoint) is the same.

When run at the kernel level, these software receive the priority needed to 'bypass' hacking software that can run at lower levels, identify suspicious behavior without the need for compatibility. user actions, including keystrokes and mouse clicks. Indeed, any software that runs at the kernel level can be a potential threat to gamers' computers, but in this respect, Vanguard is no different than the anti-cheat software we are familiar with. before.

Revealing the cause of the explosive boom in the Chinese gaming community

When it comes to "Chinese gamers," we often sigh deeply because the phrase is often synonymous with "cheater."

There should be concerned?

With the current information, it can be said that Vanguard does not do (or has not done) anything outside the framework of an anti-cheat software that normally does. The issues that Vanguard and Riot have been criticizing can be found on other software that has been around for decades, and many of them are still being launched regularly on Vietnamese gamers' computers. The main difference between Vanguard and the software mentioned above is that it is brand new and belongs to Riot, the company in Tencent 's hands .

Of course we don't say anti-cheat software is harmless and you just trust the people who create it. Previously, ESEA (the company that created the anti-fraud toolkit of the same name) was very trusted by CSGO gamers, who had a few stabs in the back of gamers, for example, in 2013 when gamers discovered ESEA to dig Bitcoin on. user's computer. Upon investigation, it turned out that a company employee had secretly used it for personal gain. The company also used its software to record Steam users' chat history and read it.

Capcom also stains with this type of anti-cheat when in 2016 gamers discovered the Street Fighter V for PC of Capcom secretly installed a kernel driver named Capcom.sys on the computer to prevent hacking. However, it seems that due to the whistle, Capcom's anti-hacking technique opens a security hole on the player's computer and allows crooks to run malicious code on players who have Street Fighter V installed. forced Capcom to remove its anti-hacking solution and apologize to the player. Similarly, in 2018 Filipino gamers discovered the existence of Coinhive cryptocurrency mining code while playing League of Legends, but it turned out that the code was inserted into the publisher's Garena + client. .

Thus, it is hard to say that there is nothing to worry about as an anti-cheat software like Vanguard because whether it is designed not to fumble in the computer of the gamer or not, the crook can still take advantage of Vanguard to sabotage a user's computer or steal information if it has a security hole. However, the same can happen with any other anti-cheat software, not just Vanguard, and so we should probably calmly wait for more information from the pro instead of 'key dancing'. 'arguing, yelling at each other and Riot in extremist words. Except that if it really slips the frame of other games it is worth being scolded, but as mentioned above, nothing proves this technically clearly.