why riot's new anti-cheat is a HUGE problem.

This video is really out of the ordinary for me but I wanted to talk about something that's been bothering me every since Valorant came out, and now the disease has infected League of Legends.
League of Legends will now require the Vanguard anti-cheat rootkit to be installed on all computers running League of Legends. This is not okay.
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[@gordonfreeman9641]

the biggest issue with vanguard is how it actually runs, there are plently more kernel-level anticheat solutions out there, but vanguard continues running even if you do not have the game open, this is a serious security risk, with things like easy anti-cheat at the very least hackers can only exploit the kernel level driver when the game is running, however with vanguard its always exploitable, which makes the problem even bigger.

[@SkyyySi]

If the game installed a kernel driver, and it can activate it at any point, then so can a pice of malware. I don't really see the improvement provided by not running constantly.

[@ignacioariellopez8491]

You could terminate it, though you wont be allowed to play at all until you reboot. And thats the shady and disgusting part, that they've made it so "difficult" so that the normal playerbase would have it constantly running in the background without their knowledge at all.

[@LowLevel-TV]

YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP

[@2khz]

Yeah if you disable it you have to restart your PC before you can play again because it *must* ensure that it runs before all other software, including other kernel drivers, so that the software can be sure that it cannot be tampered with. It has its advantages of course but it is a scary prospect when you consider the attack surface area that's opened up.

[@Peter_Schluss-Mit-Lustig]

so they essentially ask you to install a program, that has access to everything and only let you play the game while you are happy with running it 24/7 i don't think LoL is a good enough game to warrant installing some weird VMs just to run it safely

[@krunchyapples]

Pretty disturbing how many companies are moving toward installing literal root kits on your computer and pretending it's okay

[@Simon_fpv]

THIS, i am tired of acting like most anticheats arent just rootkits

[@SkyyySi]

> moving toward They have been doing this bullshit for decades

[@random6033]

EAC is also a rootkit

[@talesvinicius598]

Gamers are 100% okay with this, that's the problem, when vanguard was first announced/released you could see some of the same complaints about it and the complaints were drowned by the amount of people claiming that X game should also implement an anti cheater just like vanguard so they could have less cheaters.

[@ignacioariellopez8491]

Man, we have allowed it since the turn of the century... Im the first one that advocates for privacy, security and all that stuff, but dude, its been happening since personal computers first appeared, and we allowed it, so why are we taking this as something new and be all angry about it? Not that we shouldnt have, but it is a little too late, dont you think?

[@Frobbl]

It's important to note that hackers can get FULL access to millions of PCs if they manage to hack Vanguard. And this will be enough motivation for some of them to attempt it. This anticheat is something literally no one asked for. For every scripter I run into I run into 100+ trolls. There's far FAR FAR more trolls who ruin peoples games than there is scripters. Riot either has terribly wrong/bad priorities or they implement it for datamining or similar reasons.

[@elementalgolem5498]

thats NOT how that works my guy. vanguard being kernel level really has no impact on safety or any of that bs. you are highly unlikely to get hacked through vanguard. the realistic effect this will have on your system is negligable and you definetily do open yourself to way more dangerous things on the daily

[@Hairyson-g5j]

Maybe there isn’t much scripters because anti-cheat is working?

[@kiyoponnn]

why do you think that is? it is because anticheat has improved over the years and those cheaters who lack skill have begun trolling because they know they play terribly without cheating. Being against better anticheat makes me think that you are a cheater yourself.

[@elementalgolem5498]

@@kiyoponnn being against anticheat being uneccisarily invasive is different to being against anticheat. They don't need it to be kernel level to work, they're just lazy

[@kenion2166]

@@kiyoponnn Thats bullshit, in DOTA2 you have the worst AC ever, VAC runs on user privileges... And in 500 games I see maybe 1 guy scripting...

[@bowiemtl]

The difference between malware and anti cheat is just semantics at this point

[@creeper6530]

And the worst part is that the average Joe doesn't realize it

[@MatsYoo]

@@creeper6530 the average joe just wants a program that works, until theres an issue that affects him

[@lodgin]

tbh, the difference between malware and operating systems (Windows) is just semantics at this point

[@Xetarine]

@@lodgin Real.

[@Sorest2]

@@creeper6530 You want cheaters in your game or preceived privacy? Keyloggers and screenrecorders can all be executed with only application level priviliage as we speak. If you don't want to, don't play?

[@enkiimuto1041]

I feel you missed another problem: Riot might not be ill intended, but it makes them an even bigger target for hackers to steal data through them. Riot doesn't need a scandal of collecting data on you, all they need is a security breach they were late to notice.

[@tails55]

And given how sloppy their coding seems to be at moments, sooner or later a security breach is bound to happen

[@mr.rabbit5642]

Truth be told im pretty sure they already have 3rs parties inside for months. Question is whether Vanguard opens a doorway to RCE, or is shipped complete

[@Elephantiago]

Just as Tik-Tok is not a spyware. US might be at war witch China over Taiwan or Australia in just a few years. Imagine getting drafted and your enemy has personal information about 50% of your troops. It's not about detecting cheaters anymore, it's more about maximizing your chance of winning a future conflict at this point. And if WWII has a lesson to teach, it's that intel on enemy is what wins a war (see the story of Alan Turing and cracking the Enigma encryption)

[@flintfrommother3gaming]

THEY ARE ILL INTENDED, those who think otherwise are mentally challenged. Tencent literally owns Riot, why do you think they basically have a root kit (or an anti-cheat as they call it) in their games?

[@mariusvasile6543]

And last time they got hacked was less than 1 year ago when the entire league of legends source code and league of legends anti-cheat source code got stolen. LOL.

[@vinzzz007]

Hope somebody creates their own rootkit to see what data Vanguard collects. I'll bet it is more than they are legally allowed to do.

[@penguinmonk7661]

I might be able to get a Masters student to research this with me, gonna be in a year or two though already have all the projects for this year lined up.

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

i got you bro i found this from someone who contacted riot support Vanguard's "driver does not collect or send any information about your computer back to us". From what I understand, the local Vanguard driver has a set state monitoring your computer. While it checks files for the presence of an anticheat or altering of the driver, it does not transmit any of that data. All it does is give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to the client version of Vanguard. So while the driver portion of the anitcheat has kernel level access and technically can view or alter files, if it even does that it is entirely local and only gives a positive or negative response to the client. Do what you want with that information.

[@penguinmonk7661]

​@@saintskillerdntfkwthIf this is how it works then I actually applaud Riot on their approach, a data obuscation API flag is EXACTLY how I would have done this. Still, even a harmless flag system like this can be used for data probing, so I am not entirely convinced yet.

[@TomislavCirkovic-hm8mr]

You are right they steal you personal info they steal my facebook account and steam account infos and now they ignoring me like nothing happened I thnink that I will lawsuit them i hope riot games collapse but they are too much idiots who still play this trash games

[@toomeowstream3253]

@@saintskillerdntfkwth "contacted riot support" Stopped reading right there at first, then calmed down and read the whole comment. - Riot's "Just trust us bro" attitude stinks imho and I don't trust Tencent (and Chinese companies in general). - Yeah I'm aware I'm already giving my personal information to everyone (willingly or unwillingly, doesn't matter) but anything related to Russia or China really bothers me. - I have too much personal information stored in my computer (and no, nothing related to porn or hentai etc.) because I also use my PC for business purposes. My phone already gets infested with obvious bait-spam messages constantly and I delete them instantly, I don't want to risk my PC too you know. - I've quit LoL five or six months ago (been playing since Jinx was introduced) and never played Valorant, think I'm too old for that s**t lmao. I really wanted to return because I've always had fun no matter what, until I read all about that Vanguard thing. I suggest anyone reading this comment to never EVER reinstall the game until Riot REALLY assures Vanguard is safe and immune to get hacked.

[@morgenanspyrys]

Also, no more League/TFT on Steam Deck anymore (Vanguard doesn't support Mac or Linux) so not a security issue for a lot of us lol

[@sajayrrr]

Not true, Riot devs confirmed Vanguard wouldn't be needed on mac (and by extension I think the same would probably apply to linux) so we should be good

[@arashi9469]

@@sajayrrr Linux runs the Windows version of League, and a Rioter said that they'll make no exception for Wine. So yeah, League just won't run on Linux

[@ojonathan]

@@sajayrrrSorry but it's 100% true, Vanguard do not support Mac or Linux. It was never said LoL would not run on macOS (it will), but it was already confirmed that it won't on Linux.

[@dzigayu4944]

Just gonna play TFT mobile I guess.

[@Heightren]

So the safest place to play Riot games are mobile phones

[@WafflesASAP]

Please don't buy a second computer just to play this game. if I were TenCent, I'd see that as a signal that no matter how shitty their behavior, people will go to extreme lengths (at significant expense) to continue playing their games.

[@sorek__]

But to be honest what are better options? I love the game and I hate cheaters - how to get rid of them otherwise?

[@toby_cm]

@@sorek__ server side anti cheat

[@fulconandroadcone9488]

@@sorek__ account age. if you played for 2 years regular and you have consistent rank compared to other players you should be trusted, just use account age and performance over time, how hard can it be, at any rate it still does more for anti cheat since you can never guaranty there are no hacks.

[@fulconandroadcone9488]

@@Parritz they could also get an exploit at hardware level, anti cheat software sounds like : " we make your computer trustworthy" like that ever worked.

[@1337SBird]

@@Parritz A lot of cheating is possible because the software itself is buggy, the solution should not be spyware, but fixing your code. I'm sure most of these fixes would require additional resources and infrastructure on the (server) side of riot, so it's probably not very economical to do that. Anti-Cheat is not a solution though, it is a band-aid (if anything, it's also malware)

[@YamianGodlike]

I have been playing League since season 2. Got the prompt to install Vanguard today, went to check what was going on. Stopped reading when it said "kernel level", there was nothing they could do to salvage this. As much as I would like to continue playing, the game is not worth giving someone kernel level access. It's time to say goodbye.

[@reaperzxxtj8759]

Kernel level isnt new. 90% of anti cheats run kernel level. The difference between them is that something like Easy Anti Cheat runs in usermode and the connection is completely severed to the kernel when the game is terminated. Vanguard however, loads at ring 0 even before windows is loaded.This sits at the same level as GPU or chipset drivers which is why when a crucial driver like Nvidia completely crashes you need to reboot the whole system. Which is exactly what happens with vanguard, severing the service manually or disabling it on startup just means you must reactivate it and reboot if you have any hope of playing the game.

[@milandjukic738]

@@reaperzxxtj8759 you really wanna tell me that ac like easy doesnt grab your data while game is running?Thats still a big issue,fuck it i remember when programs used to secretly mine bitcoin on your pc in background

[@jbl271]

This is actually a very good thing. It will get people to stop playing league of legends.

[@cheesebucketman1606]

Good point

[@AUGHHHH_]

Unironically this 100%, finally free from this pile of shit, especially with how tone-deaf Riot has become as of late

[@TheLoneBit]

Yup. I'm about to uninstall it right now.

[@friendlyneighborhoodtotall1902]

it wont lmao, its too big to fail. You can come back in 3 years and let me know if its dead

[@darkmoon7422]

@@friendlyneighborhoodtotall1902 It's already half-dead, at least on semi-pro side. Without new talents the game at pro-level won't last long either as people get old. New generations are worse in general, and this trend has been there for years. While it won't stop casual players from playing it, as many just cant stop at this time, having no real goal will eventually kill the game. Although that's whole another topic.

[@skyrix_]

Vanguard is really intrusive

[@COALEDasICE]

It's the closest you can get to a bootloader without being one. It's actually ridiculous

[@lazyraccoon1526]

luckily its owned by a company based in a country that is known for never committing cyberattacks@@COALEDasICE

[@cameronbosch1213]

They wonder why I don't play Valorant. This is why. If I wanted a rootkit, I'd invite Russia on my computer. Probably be more entertaining.

[@purplewine7362]

@@cameronbosch1213 NO ONE wonders why you don't play valorant, pal

[@maxave7448]

@@purplewine7362you missed the point

[@MrCornholio1812]

Let's trust that Riot won't just let a hacker slide into vanguard's code and use it to plant agressive malware on everyone's computer (clueless)

[@KonraND]

they already did with reverse engineering

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

4 years strong. I'll update in the next 4 years

[@FrozenXO]

something something solarwinds

[@NMXLY]

Then i Hope you haven't played any of these games, that also have kernal level anti cheats - Apex Legends (EAC) - Fortnite (EAC) - Paladins (EAC) - Player Unknown: Battlegrounds (BE) - Rainbow Six: Siege (BE) - Planetside 2 (BE) - H1Z1 (BE) - Day-Z (BE) - Ark Survival Evolved (BE) - Dead by Daylight (EAC) - For Honor (EAC)

[@MrCornholio1812]

@@NMXLY None of them, you forgot valorant btw

[@node0382]

Their next version of anticheat will most probably be installing cameras inside your home to make sure the mouse movements are done by a human and not some robot.

[@Ultima64]

Well they already do that with school tests done online so it isn't too far fetched :/

[@vatsalyasoni8324]

Than they'll ban faker's account

[@avananana]

@@Ultima64 There's no way that you just compared school tests to a fucking video game. School tests lead to official and legally recognized results, video games do not. Cameras on formal examinations are fine and dandy as long as they do not require you to film anything that is not of legitimate interest to the school themselves, i.e no cameras in other rooms or pointing towards random directions that are irrelevant to the examination.

[@nemtudom5074]

Considering most people play on laptops, thats already the case.

[@MrTriple3D]

@@avananana honestly school tests shouldn't even be done outside of an actual teachers physical eye sight.

[@unface942]

As a software/game developer myself, there's no way I'm installing that sht in my personal computer

[@wannabeprettysoul]

Yeah, you should never give/share root/account access. Never trust internet!

[@ambius2]

Why not install the game in a VM? I don't think a root kernel can tunnel out of that. Can it?

[@thegovtdoesntcareaboutyou]

As a linux user+linux server admin, even if i had windows there's NO WAY i would have installed it on my computer

[@thegovtdoesntcareaboutyou]

vms are slow@@ambius2

[@carbonbeaker409]

@@ambius2VM installation is difficult as Vanguard has measures against it, not unbeatable measures, but difficult enough that even people versed in the field can find it not worth the effort.

[@GabrielCodeSWE]

You should do more vid like this, not always tech related but something you want to talk about

[@LowLevel-TV]

I will :)

[@Eagledelta3]

@@LowLevel-TV I enjoyed this video and have been saying many of the same things for years. The problem is I usually get the "Then why aren't we hearing Security Experts talk about it?" Ignoring, of course, that I personally have 10+ years of experience in Systems AND Software AND Cloud Engineering. But yeah, you know a lot more on this topic than I do and what I do know scares me.

[@mfschris6174]

Nice

[@JackTheDev]

I am really glad you covered this. I used to play Valorant a little and it really bothered me, having to boot up windows was also a pain. Sad to see this type of anti cheat is spreading, I don't play LoL myself, but feel sorry for people that do. It is also sad how this anti cheat seems to "work better", even though it can be still bypassed (I don't cheat in online video games) with modding your graphics drivers or something. Sorry for you man.

[@KusuriyaV]

Worse part is that the anti cheat has a chance of bricking and messing with key aspects of your pc. The software literally runs 24/7 and is completely messing with the system despite assurances it won't!

[@ImSkye]

Correct, I lost my perfect windows 10 setup to their AC. When I contacted support about the BSOD caused by their driver, they just told me to reinstall instead of telling me where the file to delete was.

[@reeceward5573]

Many applications come with kernel drivers; many of them "COULD" brick your PC. These are professional software engineering teams designing this. It's not just anti-cheats that could be affected by this.

[@crashniels]

Yeah it is an issue. I remember the FaceIT anti-cheat causing blue screens on my PC. It clearly said "faceit.sys". Uninstalled it and it has not crashed since.

[@ImSkye]

​@@reeceward5573Vanguard is the only one that randomly does it combined with the developer refusing support for the devices that fell victims.

[@oui7171]

@@reeceward5573 The thing is, they are incompetent, you can't even uninstal the game with the regular uninstaler, why should we trust them with that?

[@joeroeinski1107]

Honestly considering it's Tencent, there's no surprise if it effectively monitors and collects data behind your back. Still, fuck kernel anti-cheats and especially the ones that run after the game is closed.

[@MasterBroNetwork]

The data collection is less of an issue only if the anti-cheat runs while the game is open and fully terminates itself when the game client is closed, It is still a severe risk, Can't wait to be completely unable to play Hytale because Riot made Hypixel Studios embed Vanguard anti-cheat into it.

[@dankmemes8254]

@@MasterBroNetwork now why the fuck would a single player game needs anti cheat system

[@MasterBroNetwork]

@@dankmemes8254 Are you serious? You do realize that Hytale will also have multiplayer servers as well as the singleplayer modes, right?

[@dankmemes8254]

@MasterBroNetwork no i wasn't aware it will have multi-player lmao

[@wnsjimbo2863]

It doesn't run after the game is closed (anymore)

[@Captn-Z-Fear]

my favorite part is how vanguard remains on your computer after you have uninstalled all games that require it. One day i turned on my computer and found vanguard running in my background processes, I remembered I downloaded Valorant and played it once like months ago, and then uninstalled it. i was upset at the least to learn that their anti-cheat was still up and running behind the scenes doing WHAT? What on earth is an anti-cheating doing in the background processes if the games its meant to detect cheating in aren't even installed on your device.

[@shintyxd788]

while uninstalling valorant you need to uninstall vanguard separately. Im pretty sure they made it this way so average andy would just uninatall valorant without uninstalling vanguard so it can collect "DATA" from the computer while running.

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

@@shintyxd788 every single game that has an anti cheat (apex or rainbow 6 or pubg, etc) all make you install and uninstall the anti cheat seperately, and they are also rootkits. stop spreading misinformation

[@posizzisop2389]

You can just uninstall vanguard. There is a button for that.

[@Razzlelul]

You can literally uninstall it separately, I love reading braindead comments 😭

[@Captn-Z-Fear]

@@Razzlelulnot the point... my point is "literally" i dont want to have to install and uninstall more than one application to play your game like yes, I know you can uninstall it, but at the time I didn't know much about anti-cheats in video games and never foresaw that I would have to go manually uninstall anti-cheats myself after uninstalling their corresponding games. i aint downloading a game that does that. like im sure its not doing anything evil, its probably the only way for them to prevent cheaters since cheating has gone this far in this day and age, but its the idea that its on my computer and has the ABILITY to do evil even if it actually isnt that bothers me

[@enkiimuto1041]

As a game dev, please do more videos like this.

[@MsSoldadoRaso]

as a cheat dev, please dont do more videos like this

[@3bdo3id]

​@@MsSoldadoRaso 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@Tetrathegod]

wait , if i turn off vanguard ALWAYS , im fine right? or I shoudn't let it get installed at all?

[@emptywhy]

@@Tetrathegod You cannot turn it off without turning off your computer, uninstall the game.

[@eldrago19]

I am stunned by the degree of intrusiveness some companies (be they Chinese or American) can get away with. This sort of software is a security calamity waiting to happen.

[@UhOhUmm]

People are tired of cheaters and botters. Surprise.

[@Damian-ew1vl]

@@UhOhUmm league has very few cheaters, it's extremely easy to detect scripts

[@thunderingeagle]

@@Damian-ew1vl you do know that Riot also makes Valorant ?

[@Damian-ew1vl]

Doesn't matter, the discussion revolves around the incoming league anticheat. Not that it excuses vanguard in other games...@@thunderingeagle

[@darkmoon7422]

@@Damian-ew1vl Exactly. Been playing since the game's inception. Truth be said, scripters are extremaly easy to detect most of the time in league. In fact, you could quite literally just add "overwatch" from csgo and call it a day, without any further changes to anti-cheat. But I guess let's make another useless change that won't help the main issue. What are we even expecting from company that introduced the most predatory EOMM + DDA combo in the industry, to the point even EA is jealous?

[@rookandpawn]

Thanks. Today was enforcement day for League / Vanguard and watching your video made it easier for me to know to uninstall. This is batshit insane and I'm glad I'm not the only one. 14+ years of league goodbye.

[@EditingForReal]

Same here , uninstalled.

[@Wawza14Gameplays]

right there with you man, 12 years on my side through thick and thin with this game, thought it was gonna be eternal and sung praise for it on the MOBA genre, but Riot once again proved me wrong, atleast I kicked my lol addiction.

[@wearr_]

I despise vanguard, not from how effective it is, but from the approach that they take to enforcing Vanguard, and how unfriendly Riot in general has been towards the Linux community. In the end it effectively resolves less issues as well, the only thing stopping someone from pwning vanguard in theory is the assumption that people don't know how to write kernel drives as well. Security by obscurity rarely works.

[@Scarlet_moon.]

Not sure why you think that Riot should care about platform they dont even officially support,linux users that play league are so few that Riot didn't have incentive in past 10 years to even consider going for official support.

[@gonzalolog]

It's not that hard to make a kernel driver, but enough so people that sees themselves as tech savvy, shows the ignorance (I hope it's ignorance and not just acting dumb) about how and why a "kernel driver" it's needed Nowadays it's pretty easy to compile and run free cheats in league, it's really worrying in fact, the big wall it's understanding how to compile it by yourself And this anticheat makes it way hard (not impossible, you cannot stop hardware cheating as well) But once again, if people wouldn't bitch about something they don't really understand and they think they do, you would understand why riot already lost this battle and how valve it's coming for this in the near future

[@Surtr174]

@@gonzalolog Vanguard is also ineffective at dealing with cheaters. It, just like every other anti cheat, gets fucked by anyone with a brain coding said cheats. Vanguard was even humiliated on stage to be utterly worthless.

[@Dagomii]

People say that there's no point caring about Linux gamers. I think it's big mistake, as it's harder for Linux users to make league work, they have to put more effort to play this dumb game. I know from my experience, I've been playing for 10 years recently switch to Linux and all this struggle for nothing. I'm not supporting vanguard, time to quit league I guess 😀

[@Shirosaki_Ichigo]

@@Surtr174 exactly , so many gad damn hackers on shitlorant , it's not even doing it's job and it's shady as fuck , some extra rootkit malware we don't need on our PCs. Riot even claims it's helps remove smurfs? What a load of bullshit to sway the less informed masses into installing vanguard

[@PrecariousPosition]

And people are crying for valve to implement a kernel level anticheat to counter strike 2. Blows my mind people are begging for spyware to be added to their games. Thanks for the video! 👍

[@jgangx]

Most people dont give a shit and just want to play the game without cheaters. I've also done computer security research, but really even the worst case scenario will only affect a very small percentage of people and most people are fine with doing way more destructive things daily. Realistically, driving a car 3 blocks is more dangerous than the probable risk posed by this. Not arguing for it, just giving the other side.

[@melongrasp]

@@jgangx It's understandable that people want to play without cheaters but your argument is not really valid here. It's like saying "Why would I lock my apartment door, if a door to my building are locked?"

[@apprenticerocker9885]

@@jgangx I understand but in my opinion people are taking a game (which most plays for fun and not for eSports) too seriously, I'd be pissed off if a cheater ruins a match but I'd quickly move to the next one and while there are eSports competitions with money prizes and such these could be held at eSports cafès and other places where owners can control the hardware and software, these would even be a nice way for fans to meet and make best friends, last year I had a great time going to in person Splatoon tournaments.

[@wnsjimbo2863]

​@@apprenticerocker9885 Sell you are free to leave the game then Casual dont care what anti cheat the game runs Hardcore fans wanted vanguard to come yo league

[@TeamSprocket]

@@jgangx Are you seriously arguing that the risk of bodily injury during a car wreck is a comparable risk to a rootkit being exploited when a company with terrible security is deploying it 24/7? Incomprehensible.

[@Nighthawk20000]

League has a "huge issue" with cheaters? I literally haven't run into a blatant cheater for probably 8 years...

[@vgamedude12]

I know even pretending like that argument is legitimate devalues the whole video.

[@electricz3045]

The only thing vanguard does is adding an malicious rootkit, this won't stop cheaters from cheating (as they can create kenal based cheat software which vanguaged can't block or make a custom mouse driver for cheating via arduino for example) instead, it discourages players who value their privacy and the rhight to control one's very own system from playing such games.

[@4.0.4]

Honestly, AI-based image recognition is good enough that just capturing the screen makes more sense. I hope it happens, just so anti-cheat becomes moot.

[@Para0234]

@@4.0.4 There's a video on this topic, check out "Hacking into Kernel Anti-Cheats: How cheaters bypass Faceit, ESEA and Vanguard anti-cheats"

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

@@Para0234 and yet they somehow eventually still get caught

[@rawbmar1166]

@@saintskillerdntfkwth There are many people who get away with it for a long long time.

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

@@rawbmar1166 yeah maybe with valve anti cheat

[@ziadabdelmabood2078]

please do talk more about security in games in particular so people are more knowledgable, something that I don't understand quite yet is peer to peer connections and how can they be safe if they can be at all? you're awesome :)

[@valkyrie_pilot]

All connections are peer-to-peer. There's not a danger for **securely written applications**, and if you only peer to peer with people who you are OK with knowing your vague location (Every website you visit does this).

[@dbanfii]

​@@valkyrie_pilot Not true. In most online games nowadays, you send and receive data from a server. This means you don't directly connect to other clients in your match and instead the server acts as a middleman. P2P connections in games aren't as safe because they expose your IP address to other players (or peers). This can be circumvented using a VPN though

[@valkyrie_pilot]

@@dbanfii A server *is* a peer. And your IP address is not dangerous outside of giving your location, unless your router security sucks- but there are bots that scan the entire internet for vulnerable routers, so that won't save you.

[@samleevideos]

⁠@@valkyrie_pilot When people talk about P2P in gaming, they generally refer to games that run with the peer to peer between players model of networking.

[@samleevideos]

@@valkyrie_pilotAlso an IP address is definitely sensitive information especially if you’re a high profile gamer because of DDoSes. Happens all the time when a streamer’s IP gets leaked.

[@giswax]

Another issue with this is that there simply are not many cheaters on league. In my 7 years of playing the game, I could count on one hand the amount of times I've run into someone using cheats. If they think I'm going to install vanguard to continue playing the game they are wrong, I've already wasted enough of my life on this god forsaken game.

[@albertnoble2727]

Tbf last year I ran into a lot of cheaters. Though if they were banned after a few games every time, issue would sort itself out honestly. All riot has to do is hire a couple of guys for spesifically banning cheaters, starting from higher elos.

[@giswax]

@@albertnoble2727 Do you play on something besides NA? My experience ranged from smurfing with friends to my main, so from silver-masters, and I would be shocked if I played every day and somehow missed a massive amount of cheaters. (and friends from all elos have the same experience as me on NA)

[@albertnoble2727]

@@giswax yeah i don't play on na. It must be about that, the cheaters i saw was hard to miss

[@jay-d8g3v]

I only recall roughly 3 scripters using dodge scripts on obvious champs in gold-plat elo recently. And that's within the past couple of years. Use to see them a lot back in s2/s3/s4 era but you hardly see it any more.

[@ilprincipe8094]

Scripting is a big problem in high elo and there are many people who openly admit to scripting for hundreds of games and never get punished

[@Phillip3223]

And a funny thing to note from outside perspective of a Valorant Sub-Community: There was a time where multiple computers reguarly bluescreened when Valorant was closed. It's safe to assume Vanguard was/is not bugfree. Which is not only a security concern, but may be annoying aswell.

[@ANDR0iD]

This happened to my co-worker's kid. His PC kept getting BSOD cause of Vanguard.

[@bersK00]

GOD DAMN IT, I may have been a victim of this as well... it all makes sense now.

[@luis64_gamer46]

Now it all makes sense why my old pc does loop bsod since i installed valorant.

[@Steamgirled]

I know many more issues where it just does not work at all

[@Melon-el5ln]

still persists, i tried playing valorant on an older laptop and whenever i closed the game(sometimes even when started) i got blue screened

[@zerotwo7319]

Insted of spending server resources to find cheaters, they will corrupt your machine.

[@Ttangko_]

can you please ellaborate how this would handle skripters? am not so knowledgable here... also bonus question, if i may ask: if I had valorant installed but is now not on the computer, would a data breach and leak of bad actors still affect me and how is this worse than a normal data leak?

[@L9Kassadin]

Vanguard has full access to your machine, more rights than an administrator. The reason it is worse than a normal data leak is because it pretty much has anything, it scans all your files, programs etc. it collects anything and runs in the background all the time. Vanguard would "protect" league, valorant and other riot games by scanning all your files so you can't script and it may even interrupt innocent files. Riot had a security breach early in 2023 and vanguard can turn off your fans or other things that need to use your pc, i don't think you can install valorant without vanguard so even if you don't play valorant it's running all the time. If you turn it off you have to reboot your pc in order to play league/valorant again@@Ttangko_

[@Shulkerkiste]

It's not that simple to detect cheaters only on their servers.

[@mixed_nuts]

This kind of thinking is wild. Make it seem like the issue to fix cheaters is spending money on servers. Vanguard has been one of the most effective anti-cheats out there for a reason.

[@L9Kassadin]

@@mixed_nuts and prettty dangerous for a reason

[@IIIAnchani]

Problems with vanguard: Riot may not be malicious, but Tencent or the chinese government (as tencent seems to have very close ties to them) might very well be. People who work on Vanguard previously worked on ESEA (kernel level anticheat which mined bitcoin on user's PCs without their knowledge) Riot has security issues (as was seen with the anticheat leak in 2022/23 and the corresponding blackmail) that show Riot cannot be trusted with that kind of access to your pc, not because of malicious intent by Riot, but because of issues with their own security. With political tensions rising across the world, I simply do not accept giving the chinese government a remote administration toolkit for my PC.

[@dwDragon88]

One of the issues here is, even if Vanguard isn't doing anything malicious currently, an update could be pushed with an attack injected through a supply chain attack (ala SolarWinds) and create a really nasty zero-day. Riot games with Vanguard will never touch my machines.

[@riftblaze]

then just stop Playing Riot games in general, since this may be their goto Anti-cheat for current and new games in the future

[@Gramini]

Or it could be exploited by other bad actors, similar to how the Genshin Impact "anti cheat" was distributed, auto-installed and then exploited.

[@futuza]

@@riftblaze that's what I decided to do.

[@gazaim]

riotgames123

[@emptywhy]

@@Gramini It's not like Riot Games have a history with data breaches, you know, with their source code leaking and all.

[@apprenticerocker9885]

I was aware of the problem since the release of Valorant (in fact even if I really wanted to play it I skipped it for that exact reason) and I find the whole situation creepy. I think that the best way to ensure a fair game in important competitions is to resurrect the gold old "LAN party" and organize them at eSports cafès and other similar venue where hardware and software isn't easy to tamper with but probably for Tencent ensuring a fair game isn't as important as surveillance and fighting cheating is partly an excuse to install rootkits.

[@gamersworld4176]

games are not limited to 5 persons only now. it connects all of the people world wide. so a LAN party might work in a esport event it wont work in a online multiplayer game

[@apprenticerocker9885]

@@gamersworld4176 I'm not saying that we should avoid online gaming altogether, just keep online gaming for casual matches and training (where the worst thing the occasional cheater can do is to ruin a match) and do the serious matches (where you can win a place at important tournaments or money) in person

[@gamersworld4176]

that would just destroy all together. the main appeal of competitive gaming is that everyone can have a taste of hard core try hard competitive mindset. the reason why fighting games never became a popular mainstream esport because the community kept the competitive scene closed to few people and not having people have a taste of the competitiveness@@apprenticerocker9885

[@darkmoon7422]

@@apprenticerocker9885 or, alternatively, let FACEIT or other 3rd parties run their own rankings. Rito has shown again and again that their predatory use of EOMM and DDA systems disqualify them from creating serious competetive environment in their games.

[@JoshuaVilca12]

​@@apprenticerocker9885 You are describing basically what has been happening since competitive (online)gaming has been around.

[@MishaCatz]

Looks like this current patch (14.2) is a monitoring phase. Next patch is when they install vanguard. We had a good run, uninstalling too...

[@macroxela]

This actually seems to break a lot of EU Data Privacy laws, particularly in Germany, so I assume there will be some sort of lawsuit that will force companies to not do this. The EU was already successful in forcing Apple to swith to USB-C chargers and tech companies to allow users to repair their products using generic replacements (Right to Repair) so I hope it is only a matter of time before this gets dealt with.

[@fitmotheyap]

Valorant has had it for a while, all other anti cheats also do this, nothing will happen

[@deadsource]

@@fitmotheyap Or it will... but about 8-10 years later

[@macroxela]

@@fitmotheyap the EU court cases took about a decade to go through but they did, eventually. So it's not unlikely

[@Sorest2]

Nobody is forcing you to play and install their game lol? You don't have a right to play their game protected by EU laws lol.

[@macroxela]

@@Sorest2 no but any company that wants to do business within the EU has to comply with their regulations. Otherwise, they'll lose access to the EU market which is quite big. Same reason why many companies self-censor based on Chinese laws.

[@konradybcio]

2023: LLL has a baby 2024: LLL quits league it's only natural to grow up 🤪

[@buffectomorph9657]

I uninstalled riot games and let them know I will not play their games until they do not require their virus in order to play on my accounts. I am not a cheater nor would I ever cheat, this is wrong for them to force this.

[@Sparrowly1]

I don't think saying it's a privacy issue goes far enough. Installing Vanguard means that you're trusting Riot, a game dev, with the keys to the castle. And because of that, you're trusting that they have it perfectly locked down. I don't know why we'd trust Riot to do something that even Microsoft has issues with. So many people, especially on Reddit, are being straight up disingenuous by framing it as Riot just getting access to a bit more information. Edit: I was making a metaphor with the "keys to the castle" statement, but as @chriwehl7173 pointed out, it's more like you're giving them every single key to the castle. Whereas playing LoL normally is giving Riot limited access to your "castle", Vanguard is them demanding complete and unlimited access.

[@edizsuleyman5285]

Literally barely any comments Saying that

[@chicogonzales916]

The source code for the league client is also out there somewhere.... so easy for a bad actor to reverse engineer it and potentially screw everyone's pc up

[@paladynee]

riot games employees are still people like you and me. vulnerabilities still exist.

[@anon1963]

@@chicogonzales916not true

[@taylrthegreat]

Vulnerabilities will always exist, even on a computer with nothing but chrome installed on it there is still Vulnerabilities, if I want to play game and the tradeoff is potentially my discord chat habits getting to Chinese people I'll just have to take the tradeoff, is it safe not particularly but am I in any real danger compared to just having an internet connection in the first place, not really china can know everything that Google knows about me if they hacked Google and have root access to my pc for me to have less cheaters in my game I've decided the risk is worth it because I don't have much to lose even if China was super evil about it

[@ambuj.k]

The fact that these kernel level rootkits (which are supposedly anti-cheat software) are closed source and always running in the background makes it even more creepy.

[@snowys4168]

How would an open source anti-cheat even work? Genuine question I'm not versed in this sort of thing at all.

[@TheHighborn]

​@@snowys4168yes.

[@gamersworld4176]

same question. i think the commenter missed the main point of anti cheats. @@snowys4168

[@cob1million]

@@snowys4168 Open source making it clear exactly how the anti-cheat detects cheaters might initially make it easier to circumvent, but it also means that a greater community can peer-review the code to verify/improve its resilience (and that it's not doing anything it shouldn't be). The people most motivated to reverse-engineer a closed-source program will most likely be malicious actors who will take advantage of any vulnerabilities they find; being closed-source means trusting the anti-cheat developers (in this case Riot) to play cat-and-mouse behind the scenes to fix exploits as they discover them themselves.

[@electricz3045]

@@snowys4168 imagine you as a developer working on an closed source project which you obfuscate and then give to users for free, you will be the only one with access to that very sourcecode and so you can't really find every bug yourself, your users may enourage some bugs which you can fix but it won't by no means everything. now pricture yourself as a programmer who releases his sourcecode, freely aviable on github. Now volunteers will read the code and if they find bugs, they will open an github issue and help you to fix it, they may ven do a pull request with the solution implemented by themselve which you just have to analyze and if everything seems good, you can accept the pull request. gnu/linux is opensource, and what do you think, why there is no linux malware but a bunch of windows malware? think about that.

[@uuu12343]

I alao hate those school exam monitoring tools which are effectively "Legalized root kits", shit like "Lockdown Browser"

[@cheesebucketman1606]

It's still extremely closed sourced and way more watered down than this stuff.

[@yvindlavold5741]

Game developers lie so often by omission. Blizzard said that gear wouldn't be pay2win in Diablo Immortal, and that was true. It was the gems that you inserted into the gear that was pay2win. So when Riot says they don't collect data but leave out whether or not Tencent does, you can be damn sure that Tencent collects the data.

[@sanketower]

How come after 4 years of VALORANT (and Riot Games getting hacked) there are no signs at all that they're collecting personal information? You would think that by this time we should already know if they lied or not. Don't get me wrong, I hate Tencent as much as the next guy, but I feel very confident that at least Riot Games are being truthfull about this.

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

@@sanketower yeah so much fear misinformation and doubt in this comment section, literally no scandal or any issue has arised from vanguard and there are simple ways to disable it with like 3 lines of code

[@yourname-dp8xw]

Yea xd you guys are very misinformed and delusional. EVERY company that isn't using open source code will most defeneately steal your data and sell it, be it because the government wants the data or for monetary gain. This is everywhere and will be everywhere. The only way to circumvent this is to use open source stuff like Tor and Linux where there is no incentive to try to steal data and where everyone can make sure that there is no malware. Most big tech companies go into a massive loss each year. How do you think that they make ends meet? The data will be of good leverage for investors and such to make sure that it is worth the cash. Take youtube for example, runs in a definite loss, but it can make it up by basically being spyware that gives info to the highest bidder.@@saintskillerdntfkwth

[@ougonce]

@@sanketower What signs do you want, exactly? If someone breaks into your house every night and steal things you aren't using so you never notice it, that doesn't mean you're safe

[@sanketower]

@@ougonce Except that nobody is stealing anything. Because a third party saw through the cameras in your house (the Riot hack) and the guy breaking in has not taken anything (no evidence found from the hack). You guys are making up the story of "Riot is collecting excesive personal information through VANGAURD" and then use it as evidence against VANGAURD. Quite delusional if you ask me.

[@adamgarlow5347]

This is why i don't play multiplayer games anymore or if there is a online/multiplayer component, i disable it along with anticheat (elden ring for ex). These companies seriously overestimate the appeal of their micro transaction machines and underestimate how many times I'm willing to replay my library

[@Ay-xq7mj]

Yeah when Starfield came out i pirated morrowind and installed openMW havent completed that save but played enough that i know i like the game and have basic comprehension of the game and could easily beat it. Is probably best RPG world i have played in. I dont really care if the devs/publishers make money on these live service games since i will just pirate old games there are so many countless.

[@megadjc192]

Just after we got League working on Linux again... I was on the dev team who got it working again... I'm honestly disappointed in them. There is no reason to require it for anything but the highest level of the game. I can understand requiring it for high tier professional tournaments. But it is a bad thing for just normal play and I personally just play ARAMs... Too bad Riot. I've played for over 10 years. Looks like it's time to move on.

[@vyyr]

if by the highest level of game you mean GM+, hiring skilled players for peanuts to act as admins is the actual solution to ALL high level issues. But riot will never implement it. Even if it's probably much cheaper.

[@fannabeltonakis76206]

Never in my life have I seen a cheater in League, probably by pure coincidence and I've been playing since season 1! Is such a deeply rooted anti-cheat necessary to this degree??

[@vyyr]

@@fannabeltonakis76206 in the recent years in high elo, it became an issue. In the early seasons like 4-5, there were incidents with drop hacks. And no, there is no need for such an invasive anticheat.

[@tariel1928]

Sounds like the medicine is worse than the disease for sure.

[@johanngambolputty5351]

I'm sure anticheat is super tricky, but people need to figure out how to do it server side, you shouldn't need to invade someones pc to supervise them just for a bloody game...

[@SomeDudeInBaltimore]

But that would require extra resources on the corp's part, and that eats into profit, and we just can't have that.

[@wnsjimbo2863]

Or you cant stop play the game if you don't like anti cheat

[@johanngambolputty5351]

@@wnsjimbo2863 Or you can just let random strangers in your house if you don't like boundaries

[@TeamSprocket]

@@wnsjimbo2863 I'm sorry your addiction to a video game has removed all sense of privacy and risk.

[@Topunito]

The cheaters are using programs that make their inputs for them. How the fuck would you detect this from the server side?

[@tc_kommark]

This seems like a really good attack vector against a streamer

[@gutzimmumdo4910]

vanguard is on and i uninstalled lol, i hope many others do aswell, this is crazy that the thing runs in the background and u have to restart the pc if u disable vanguard and u want to play lol, unbelibable.

[@Spartan322]

I respect Valve's attempt to never install a a rootkit anti-cheat, though I argue they should stop banning people for cheating and instead segregate them from the community, and encourage the cheaters to stick around so they can better track the cheaters from the serverside.

[@TheDragShot]

Meanwhile Valve: "You get a piece of coal, you get a piece of coal, and _you_ ... you get a highly toxic piece of coal. Now get out of here!" 😂

[@SirLightfire]

That's an interesting idea Create a honeypot for cheaters

[@ardentcabal2581]

I've always just thought, if you flag a cheater, don't ban them but give them a separate MMR that only plays with other flagged cheaters. Vanguard is the straw that breaks the camel's back for me right now.

[@gonzalolog]

But CSGO and cs2 had way more cheaters than league, damn, it's rare to have cheaters on league but on Cs it's every friday

[@atrium9597]

this idea is actually genius i want this one to happen

[@uuu12343]

"I'm kinda pissed off" - me basically everyday ever since december 2023

[@mosabalnadi3866]

I've been playing League since season 1, I currently work as a penetration tester so I can't keep playing the game even if I dedicated a separate PC as a matter of principle and self-respect

[@ssg6499]

Same problem for me as a csgo player. I hate the cheaters, but if valve decides to go with a root kit (as some dumb idiots on the reddit want to), I will have to uninstall CS from my computer. Cheaters ruin it for everyone.

[@saveborg1091]

oh no, they're going to steal all your private DATA that you already posted on the internet, how could i deal with this information!

[@matteac_rs]

with valve i think is a more reasonable *risk*, but i dont trust tencent. anyways, everyone should be worried about companies running code in kernel mode, it look sooo bad

[@Sam-rr4ek]

Hey man faceit and esea do their job well

[@JmbFountain]

Valve said multiple times they don't want to run an invasive anticheat and instead try to move AC to the server. This has the advantage of also being able to work against cheats that don't even run on the same computer as the game.

[@ArceusShaymin]

@@Sam-rr4ek Did people already forget that ESEA was caught being used to mine bitcoins on their users' PCs? They went to court over it, lost, and even paid a fine. I wouldn't be touching ESEA with a 100-foot pole. Doesn't matter how huge of an apology they made - never touch anything of theirs again if you value your machine's integrity

[@simon-james]

Vanguard decided my sound driver was a virus

[@darthlooper3625]

Unfortunately, Sandboxing in VMware or having separate hardware is the way to go if you want safer, however, even with separate hardware or sandboxing, you still leave a vulnerability with a required network connection to play the game, exposing the router or any other networked devices to the Vanguard data collection.

[@Ffoo_ffighter]

I bet you Tencent/China has this covered.perfevt time to quit

[@guilherme5094]

Riot's audience is the same as Rockstar's audience, they complain but end up consuming everything that is thrown in their face. And so nothing changes.

[@MidasButSilver]

Its not just this audience, that audience. Its gamers in general, always complain and say you will refuse to accept something in a game but fear of missing out will make them continue playing. No backbone will be shown. Its like that one time a call of duty game was planned to be boycotted by a huge steam group of players because they demanded dedicated servers, that then played the game anyway on day of release.

[@snowys4168]

@@MidasButSilver Ever since DLC was introduced in 2006 gaming has been dead

[@apprenticerocker9885]

Sadly most "company audiences" are like that: from The Pokèmon Company to Apple

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@apprenticerocker9885Nintendo is by far the worst.

[@INTJames]

I was just looking at that in my system tray recently thinking exactly this, it's installed on thousands of computers and it's definitely full of vulnerabilities, didn't realize it goes as far as kernel access. That's like instant escalation once exploits are created for it, and like you said tencent is Chinese so there's another huge door they have into all of our tech

[@johnwayne-kd1pn]

Unlike the Americans who surveillance and spy on everyone and gather everyones private data and use this for criminal activity and criminal wars around the world. But hey, China.. Right?

[@romansmoll7019]

Hey, just like many, I took time to read about Vanguard and Kernel when first rumors came up. When you uninstall League, for example, the appdata folder would still store the cache of the client, so simple "add or remove programs" is not enough, really. For those who chose to accept vanguard regardless and decided than that it was too much, would you say that a following riot uninstall guide for vanguard ( which is still just an "add or remove...") is enough?

[@reaperzxxtj8759]

Users>username>Appdata really only holds save data and configs. The data held in there isn't a concern.

[@romansmoll7019]

@@reaperzxxtj8759 Understood. However, still the question remains if uninstalling Lol and Vanguard using blindly their uninstall guides is enough to get it out of the system entirely?

[@iTunsiscool26]

@@romansmoll7019 No it isn't. You can find other videos on youtube showing how to fully get rid of it. It's a lot more entrenched than you think it is

I stopped playing Valorant after I found out about Vanguard's kernel level access, around a year ago. Granted I wasn't playing an "unhealthy amount", but the point is, you'll be fine without LoL. I'll do this with any game that requires kernel level access, no exceptions. Sad thing is, apparently Vanguard doesn't even work that well, I've heard many complain about cheaters in Valorant.

[@purplewine7362]

why are people in people in this comment section just talking out of their asses? it works better at preventing cheating than any other shooter. you probably got owned by a gold player an are now complaining about "hackers"

[@0xL0uL0]

Wow, you are taking a noble stance against evil chinese companies! Wait until you realize that every single major and non-major multiplayer game is running a kernel level anti-cheat, and see yourself shifting goalposts because "china bad, west the best" so it's OK to play this other game that has the same potential to harvest every ounce of data out of you. But it's OK, don't worry, being an absolute hypocrite with no opinions of your own is completely fine in 2024.

[@animeangeis]

I don't know which multiplayer games you play, but it's almost impossible to avoid kernel-level anticheat these days. They just don't go and advertise it like Riot does

[@tragedy8365]

⁠@@Bobrystotelesit doesn’t lol most of the people saying this are pisslow and get stomped by some plat peakers in dm. If they are actual cheaters in your game as long as you report them they get banned mid game

[@purplewine7362]

@@Bobrystoteles another dunning kruger guy talking outta his ass

[@kermitdafrog8]

Windows should only be run in a VM or some sandbox setup.

[@DaveMacara89]

Based.

[@severgun]

there is no difference between mac, linux and windows. Open source does not mean that code had any security audit or even code review. Also anticheats do not work in VM

[@kermitdafrog8]

@@severgun open source means the source code is open for code review. It's up to you to review the code. There is a lot of difference between Linux and Windows.

[@anon1963]

stop with linux meat riding

[@flintfrommother3gaming]

@@severgun Tell that to the University of Minnesota.

[@wafik206]

I wanted to add that vanguard requires safe boot, which means that you can't have more than one boot driver enabled. As a broke CS student who needs more than one operating system for work and school, I won't be able to play the game anymore.

[@velho6298]

Hasn't Vanguard been hot-topic for a while already? Was it running in the fps game produced by riot games?

[@vilian9185]

yes, it's n valorant

[@Jyukenmaster95]

that's what i'm wondering. I thought the community was already talking about this a few years ago is this some kind of reupload?

[@vyyr]

@@Jyukenmaster95 there used to be no vanguard for league.

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@vyyrYeah, SomeOrdinaryGamers talked about it when Valorant was released and told people not to play it. Hopefully people actually listen this time.

[@McconneIIRet]

Riot sucks.

[@redstoneninja3375]

What is stopping hardcore cheaters to just install their own rootkit that could trick the anticheat system to think it's running within kernel space, in theory you could make a rootkit that will look for another kernel module or driver being installed and prevent that and even make a fake environment and trick the anticheat software, the only thing you need to install that before you install the game

[@NihongoWakannai]

It's difficult to make that so not many people will be able to. Then those smaller amount of cheaters can be caught by human review teams.

[@2khz]

I won't play any game with an anti-cheat system that requires that it runs at the kernel-level on principle, if nothing else. I have been hoping for a long time now that AI-based (deep learning) anti-cheats like Valve's VACnet would really take off so that players don't have to run invasive anti-cheat software on their computer at all. Unfortunately, whether it's a limitation of the technology currently or a limitation of Valve's implementation of it: VACnet doesn't seem to be particularly effective as anyone who has played Counter-Strike will be able to tell you.

[@chilli1695]

AI tech doesn't seem to be there yet. Hopefully just a few more years. Until then tho, this is really the only effective way to deal with them sadly.

[@hupo08-xr3zs]

funny how your latest video is from apex, a game using a kernel level anti cheat lmao

[@2khz]

@@hupo08-xr3zs Easy Anti-Cheat runs in regular ol' user mode on Linux, which is where I play the game now if I want to play :)

[@EasyMoney322]

I wouldn't mind EA\Valve\Ubisoft to install kernel level backdoor to my pc, but not this small '200 game collective game design company'. How about they fix their game on application level, before going down to the kernel level? Last 3 times I've played Valorant I was facing BSODs with kernel dump leading to the vanguard, as well as poor performance on the system overall. Also, its strange to see mac players being allowed to play without vanguard, with no similar exception to the *Nix players.

[@qxqxqxqxq]

Who knew LLL was a true League of Legends gamer all along...

[@INeedAttentionEXE]

Hoping that since LOL is more popular than Valorant, people in the virtualization community can dump the AC and just have more eyes on it in general to be able to run this in a VM.

[@Ellefsen97]

I hope we can find workarounds aswell, but I read somewhere that people got banned after a patch because they played LoL on Linux. So virtualization has banned players unfairly in the past

[@megadjc192]

@@Ellefsen97 More specifically they were banned because they were missing a patch. That version has been corrected and a few people had their bans reversed when they actually had a human look at their ticket. The version in question was wine-lol-staging on the AUR. I was on the dev team who helped fix league on linux. Too bad we can't continue to play... Vanguard is where I myself, draw the line.

[@depralexcrimson]

lmfao i was calling this for years, that they'll force vanguard for LoL too, and nobody believed me lmao

[@Ellefsen97]

@@megadjc192 You’re not alone. I’ve played League since S2, but I have decided to uninstall because of Vanguard. I don’t like the precedent it sets. While I don’t think Riot has any bad intentions with the Kernel Driver, it’s impossible to know what the driver does. I don’t feel comfortable installing a root kit by a company 100% owned by the biggest Chinese company in the world as well

[@bowiemtl]

I’m 99% sure you already can through hyper-V

[@wknd3822]

The sad thing is that anti cheats like this dont even fix the cheating problem. In high ranked games of Valorant people are still cheating and always will be.

[@purplewine7362]

lmfao valorant has significantly fewer cheaters than ANY other shooters like CS, R6, overwatch, apex etc. You're just talking out of your ass

[@epoche0006]

@@purplewine7362 so I see this guy commenting similar comments on every comment where it says valorant still has cheaters. Chances are this honorary riot employee with brown in his nose has internalized valorant to his identity that he cannot take any criticisms on the matter. Exemplified perfectly by his lack of understanding in the logical overlap between there being less cheaters in valorant then other games with less intrusive AC, and there still being one. Shame, honestly.

[@caliburnleaf9323]

@@purplewine7362 "Significantly fewer" does not mean "none." You have done absolutely nothing to disprove that "people are still cheating," and in fact have implicitly supported it.

[@tragedy8365]

Missed the point that those players get banned almost instantly as soon as they cheat

[@yaskier1]

What high rank do you mean?

[@johnsmoke1785]

2nd computer is the solution. If you are a gamer you probably have enough parts lying around for a 2nd computer for your non-gaming stuff. And if you are really totally broke and can't effort anything, go dual boot with LINUX for the stuff that needs to be really safe. Really, while this is a heavy step in regards of IT privacy, in the end it just means that you have to dedicate a PC or OS(dual boot) for gaming.

[@phil7extreme]

i thnk you should install vangurad on an extra PC and try to see what it actually does. Especially, what does it do when the game isn't even running.

[@ONIscrooge]

This may have been somewhat out of the ordinary, but it did inform me about anti-cheat software using kernel level drivers, which I didn't know. Good vid, gonna warn friends about this, so thank you.

[@Ramenmaster7000]

I'm outraged! I just logged in to play, saw a update, now I can't even play. This isn't fair. I have to be on Linux due to my low quality PC and now I can't play at all! :'(

[@tylow1314]

Knowing Riot is owned by Tencent , it is really scary

[@fishbones9396]

so tell me, R U NOT USING DISCORD?

[@tamtamxxx2854]

China company own the world Epic game,riot

[@rpscorp9457]

@@fishbones9396 Discord doesnt install any rootkit level programs.

[@lMINERl]

At the end of the day you end up doing nothing to hackers in this cat & mouse game and end up hurting real players

[@Caellyan]

100% this. Nothing is stopping someone from connecting a raspberri pi that emulates a keyboard/mouse and there's no way of detecting that without actually requiring all hardware to have some sort of certificate verification built in.

[@TheDemocrab]

@@Caellyan Don't worry, Riot was the main company pushing these ring0 intrusive anticheats so before long they'll just expect to be able to waltz into your PC and do a full cavity search just to make sure you're not hacking.

[@howl404]

@@Caellyan Stupid take, how many of "casual" cheaters are ready to do it? Are you know how easy it is to buy cheat for CS and play with it for a few years and maybe not even get banned?

[@Caellyan]

@@howl404 Almost as easy as buying a modded kbd off craigslist...

[@TeamSprocket]

@@howl404 I know you're a teenager or younger, but people did create and sell physical cheating tools back in the day when it the tools to hack on consoles was more primitive, and people can and will do it again for one of the world's biggest games.

[@YISP7]

I quit LoL because of this after 3000h paytime yesterday. Uninstalled all Riot Services, blocked their connections via DNS Server and will never touch it again. Enough is enough🤡 Sad thing is, after this is installed once, you can't even be sure that this kernel driver is removed entirely when you uninstall it. You would have to literally buy new hardware to REALLY be sure it's gone. This is how deep this software goes. I work in cyber security and I clicked "Update" too fast. Nowhere is it stated clearly what you really install. And the fact that it runs 24/7 even when not playing and requires you to reboot once shut down tells you enough on how deeply this driver is rooted in your system.

[@Muda.Muda.Mudaaa]

I feel you Bro im a CCNA network engineer tbh im fine with them collecting data lol im not a criminal to be afraid of a thing I think u can do play ur game on a KVM VM if ur worried about Spying

[@YISP7]

@@Muda.Muda.Mudaaa Absolutely. I mean ok, encrypt the data you're sending so no one can tamper around. But TELL us what you send. It's a Ring0 fight anyways. So even if a cheat engineer knows what they collect, you still operate on the same level. And why 24/7? If I tell my Dev team that all their PC's get compromised 24/7 because 'reasons', they'd get me fired :D I'll build some dedicated ARAM PC's for me and a friend and just integrate them into a VLAN or whatever. Haven't worked that out. I'm not a fan of VM in a pvp environment cause of the responsiveness. But maybe I'm behind here a bit, haven't done that for some years.

[@randomizednamme]

Thank you for talking about this, I’ve seen too many channels say, “well everyone has my data anyway”. It’s nearly pointless for preventing cheating as well as they aren’t requiring Vanguard on Mac, so cheaters will just move there.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Exactly. Such f**king hypocrits that I will never support. I didn't support them with Valorant, now I won't anymore at all...

[@michaeledwardharris]

Where does the collection stop? "Trust me, bro."

[@absentchronicler9063]

its crazy that the average person would let a company do this shit just to play a game

[@saintskillerdntfkwth]

Its crazy that you think vanguard has any more risk than literally any other piece of software on your computer.

[@absentchronicler9063]

@@saintskillerdntfkwth it does, i only run foss on my computer

[@darellldark]

Great video, pleased to see another LoL player out there. I think, for me, it's the point in League history where I quit. I really like the characters, I love my main Aatrox, I like this game. But install rootkit into my PC is not worth it. My machine is my workstation and personal machine at once. And I don't think I can risk my data just like that. Sad news, but it is what it is. You're not alone in this opinion

[@clearcatch3307]

Imagine this scenario: if users / players that are known to use cheats will probably move to Linux. Why? Instead of running the game on your PC, you might want to run it under a VM. That's great! Imagine bypassing TPM module on a VM, having support for GPU (like xen does, used by GeForce NOW) and let's introduce cheat developers: pay2cheat on a VM. Where the cheat developer provides you a spoofed VM image (to do not be caught) + support to be able to play that game with cheats. Cheat providers would still be able to run cheats above the anticheat and be more safe, and trusted than an anticheat lol. What Vanguard did? made this harder for casual player to cheat on a game, for a while. Maybe what I told you sounds kinda complex, needs a lot of time to put it under development and so on, but it's possible. If GeForce NOW can run games under virtualized containers using their hardware resources, everyone can do that, for cheating. So basically, running a rootkit under a VM might be safe (but not 100%), because Tencent might try to detect your VM or even worse, to escape the sandbox.

[@jagdtigger]

Dont think they have the $$$ to outbid intelligence agencies on a vm breakout vulnerability. Not to mention it would be a single use toy..... (breaking out of a VM is like shaking a hornets nest)

[@Scytex]

You won't be able to run Vanguard in a VM. The cheating market in valorant is already quite established and so far the only thing that worked well was DMA, external cheats and pixel based. With the last December update it seems they started actively detecting DMA hardware, tho no idea how it works as I didn't really look into it. Riots anti cheat team is always quite quick to catch up and made up of ex cheat devs. The only alternative would be to have MacOS running in a VM to play league, as Mac won't need vanguard and will continue using the old anti cheat. It is definitely not as easy as you might think and if anyone finds a way, it will be patched in a short time or needs to be hidden behind an expensive private cheat with only a few slots, which not only stops casual cheaters but basically 99% of the market. Vanguard is atrocious but at the end of the day it is probably the best anti cheat right now for a shooter so I am not surprised Riot is adding it to League with all the scripters and bots in the game. Running games via KVM or Xen is nothing new, the biggest problem will always be anti cheats detecting it via methods like RDTSC etc. as a VM will never behave exactly like bare metal.

[@xTwistCinema]

I feel like you just presented a fantastic idea, if only it were so simple. I hear stories of people being banned for using VM's whether cheating or not. Seems riot is not virtualisation friendly, which is a big shame.

[@omdavbu]

Yeah Vanguard will stop you if it detects it's being virtualized... that's why Vanguard breaks all Linux compatibility solutions. I would love to play Riot titles in a Windows VM on my Linux box I can't.

[@jagdtigger]

@@omdavbu It will windows too, malwaresoft is pushing HVCI really hard.....

[@mk8ant]

from the perspective of a cheat developer, these anti cheat’s don’t even do that great of a job. the most effective solutions are all server side. stop sending enemy positions to the client if they aren’t visible, perform server side checks on all incoming packets to look for unrealistic movement patterns, etc. all of this combined with a simple kernel anti cheat (ya know… not a root kit) would be way more effective than just installing a root kit on every players pc. it would essentially force cheaters into using ultra smoothed about exclusively which wouldn’t even be *that big* of an advantage (consider aim assist on games like COD which are hundreds of times stronger), and even then those situations could be dealt with via a solution similar to overwatch. i think a big reason why things like this haven’t been implemented is simply because it would be more costly for the company as doing it all in a root kit means the work is offloaded largely to the players pc rather than their own servers.

[@twynb]

i can kinda get behind wanting to have a strong anti-cheat with valorant - it's a direct competitor to counter-strike, which has (had?) a huge cheater problem. but league? i've seen like one(1) instance of a streamer meeting someone who used a dodge script, and i'd been around that community for like 4 years when i quit? what would you even do as a cheat in league? a dodge/aim scipt wouldn't be nearly as powerful as an aimbot in a shooter, would it?

[@Kianwan]

Cheating is super rampant in high elo

[@owlstock679]

I might be really off topic, but, can we get a gaming stream (or even, multiple) later on?

[@Sarge198]

I've played League on and off since 2009, uninstalled it a few weeks ago. Feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my psyche. Thank you Riot for helping me kick my LoL addiction!

[@StevenHodder]

Using your knowledge for good is always a worthwhile video to watch :)

[@madson-web]

Is it fine if a western company does the same? How safe are we?

[@beermarket9971]

I'm in the exact same boat, my friends and i all stopped playing League since this vanguard, it's sad we were having so much fun together... I'm thinking about buying a new computer just for this but the hassle of having 2 computers at one desk is just not worth it for me atm...

[@ScaryHutmanPictures]

Take it as a sign to stop playing League. Feels awkward for the first 2-3 weeks since you'll have so much more time but you wont miss it afterwards. I also did this and use the newly gained timeslot* for gym and reading a book. *yes, playing League was more like a daily appointment/job

[@dip9995]

It really is like a daily chore. I’ve been playing for a decade-I started when I was 14. I’ve quit a handful of times but always came back. I suppose it’s finally goodbye.

[@TOWGYB]

One can only hope Riot is more diligent with fixing bugs in their anti-cheat than in their games

[@emptywhy]

One can uninstall the game, instead of only hoping that Riot handles your data better than they have their own, having had multiple data breaches, leaking their own source code, losing all of their data. That, or only hoping that their links with the Chinese Government doesn't result in anything nefarious, in regard to your data. Let's not pretend that you have to accept this happening to you, you do not, frankly I think you're absolutely insane if you do.

[@TOWGYB]

@@emptywhy I'm more so referring to Riot messing up something in the kernel and bricking pc's or locking you out. The data concerns are equally valid though

[@Volvary]

@@TOWGYB You mean what literally happened when Vanguard came out? Where it was detecting Keyboard drivers or hardware controllers as cheats, disabling them without consent and causing people to lose access to their keyboards completely or their CPU fan completely being disabled and leading to people's PC breaking?

[@darkavenger2561]

@@Volvary "When it came out" Talking about the past when it's completely fine now classic.

[@shaggy4667]

The problem is you can't even get to uninstall everything riot-related properly and it's terrifying

[@0000none3]

how

[@shaggy4667]

@@0000none3 League of Legends doesn't come packed with an uninstaller, and for the other games (especially the riot launcher) once you uninstall them they leave files hanging left and right

[@adgjmptpwpjm123]

@@shaggy4667 exactly, all to steal valuable data from its users, classic CCP tactics

[@Daniel_Rahl]

@@shaggy4667 that´s why I can´t uninstall lol - wth!

[@black_dragon274]

@@Daniel_Rahl same sh!t with ea laucher. you can t unistall that piece of sh!t!! azz launcher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@Nepplay]

vanguard is like a backdoor for hackers and riot isn't well known for their security so giving them acces to karnel level will fuck your pc for good... i don't plan to play league if they don't remove this "anticheat"

[@santiagoibarlucia9859]

I watch your channel AND I play league so this video actually helps a lot of us to understand these issues, so thanks, I already uninstalled, privacy is the most important thing about having a PC, it's a PERSONAL computer. Most players have no idea what a rootkit is, what a kernel is, etc etc. I hope they don't get hacked

[@unearthlynarratives_]

Oh look, another person who thinks they have privacy lol. You got a phone? A smart TV? Any SMART device? If you do, which i'm 99% sure you do, then you have lost your privacy a very, very long time ago.

[@henriquekirchheck]

@@unearthlynarratives_ Original Commenter: We should be careful about privacy risks somewhat. You: Yet you use other devices that are privacy risks, curious! I'm very intelligent.

[@unearthlynarratives_]

@@henriquekirchheck Nice one bud, uninstall your anti-virus whilst you're at it since that's also a privacy risk, it's a rootkit at the end of the day ;)

[@henriquekirchheck]

@@unearthlynarratives_ I don't use a anti-virus for that exact reason buddy. Now you may say I'm dumb for that, but I know what I'm doing and you shouldn't assume that something is true just to try to win an argument. What if the original commenter has a ungoogled Android phone that uses only proven to be safe and open source apps? What if they have a raspberry pi for media consumption? What if they don't have any smart home devices? It's definitely unlikely, but it's an extreme that some people are willing to go for privacy. Of course it's unlikely the original commenter does all of that, but does it matter when they care about it enough to recognize when something isn't secure? Do you have to be on an extreme to care about privacy? I would say no, but I know you clearly don't agree with me.

[@logc1921]

@@unearthlynarratives_ No one worth their salt uses an AV

[@CErra310]

thanks to riot for forcing me to stop playing league of legends

[@Darkxellmc]

I hope we will soon be equipped with hardware level ssd swapping, to boot on completely fresh hardware depending on what we are doing. It's not too hard to make a custom motherboard that does this, please make it a standard soon...

[@aykutakguen3498]

RIP LOL Linux, we had a good run lads

[@falsepanda2981]

joever on to better things now I suppose

[@mihairomulus2488]

if anything linux is better because it can't run it

[@saiko361]

Not only will the playerbase shrink because of "not trusting vanguard" but also vanguard requires a somehow modern pc / mainboard with TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot support, so a lot of players with an older pc won't be able to play the game. I don't think cheating is or was a big problem in LoL, the server side anti cheat / script was very good at detecting those cheats. I blieve RIOT decided to implement Vanguard for malicious purposes like collecting data and selling them to advertisement companies.

[@AS-oz6ep]

They went full Sony. Never go full Sony. "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

[@Dagomii]

We need more videos like this 🙌 its sad how some people are ignorant, not researching what they installing and have no care about their privacy 😢

[@roborob347]

As a Linux gamer, I am happy my PC can no longer run League. Huge net positive.

[@TtEL]

I thought we learned our lesson when Sony provided a rootkit with every music CD...

[@black_dragon274]

Nah, whxres brainwash people on the internet, how is it good to have a rootkit in your PC and all these whxres ban your account when you expose them. That's why we got here again. At any moment, a comment must appear that I am wrong in what I say. Just wait.

[@Kairosen]

Vanguard is a highly intrusive anti cheat. But sadly people wont care over the fact it's the most effective anti cheat on the planet. Cheaters in Valorant are an absolute oddity. People are willing to compromise their systems in the name of cheater free lobbies. Valve still cant handle cheaters after decades of development with CS, and its only getting worse. Riot are the first to make cheaters a complete rarity in an fps. Im not sure what other kernal level solutions are out their that would be considered "ethical". But until one that is comes along and is as good at stopping cheating as Vangaurd, no one will care. Thats just the sad reality.

[@leo6659]

now ai anticheats are coming, so this should be outdated