Riot Games' kernal level anti-cheat, Vanguard, has received an update which is allegedly altering system firmware associated with cheating.

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?

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 hour ago

    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.