The Vanguard Incident

[@Ryscu]

Download Outplayed for FREE today! ✅ www.influencerlink.org/SHKN5

[@piepie1231]

bro your videos are getting more and more for computer sci students XD. love the content

[@lessgoo3428]

The problem isnt the anticheat and the data it collects. The problems re that riot is owned by tencent that is a chinese based company. Chinese companies have a law that enforces them to send data they collect to the Chinese democracy .... Also riot has been hacked in the past like u said and if they get hacked , people's data will be stolen too .

[@LORDSofCHAOS333]

vengured block it thaw

[@eckpu]

overwolf is a disgusting Bitcoin mining spyware

[@krystians2016]

my friend had 80-100 ping before vanguard so playable and now after vanguard he have 200+ all the time

[@wigmanmania259]

Simply put, people don't really trust Riot enough to give them kernel level access

[@breakpoint1875]

Sort of, I think its mostly the 24/7 part as well as the fact that its not necessarily riot, but the backdoor riot created without having the security credentials to prove it wouldnt be abused by a bad actor

[@Shogun_38]

Well not necessarily. People don't trust it not because Riot has access (although most people do feel that way) but because in case their anti-cheat gets bypassed/hacked into the people who compromised the anti cheat now also have full Kernel level access from PC boot up. But imo it's such a little risk as there are way more and probably easier ways for actually experienced hackers to get your data.

[@fuffmydog]

But people trust Ubisoft, EA, Activision Blizzard? All of their anti cheats have kernel level access for a long time Nah this is just petty fear mongering, just play your games

[@pedronabais1456]

i mean is not even about riot's it's about anyone like would you give your house's key to your best friend? let's say you trust him 100% and he is trustable, he can still lose them, be robbed or every sort of problem, the safest way is to not give them the keys at all.. this is the problem with vanguard, you are just hoping it doesn't lose the keys or as he ryscu said, get robbed adn accessed through riot... it's can quite litteraly be a high privelege ransomware, and our only safety is that riot pinky promises it will keep the keys safe... also it's a even bigger slap on the face when everybody it's forced to use it just (in theory) to help the chinese server and the top 0.3% of other servers, 99.5% of the people in this video will never get any use out of it

[@aukora129]

@@breakpoint1875 Okay but you can turn it off, it doesnt need to be 24/7. It's 24/7 because thats convenient for players. All other kernel level anti-cheats are also "24/7" they just dont show up as an active program, which vanguard could also do since it isnt doing anything when you aren't playing league. It also isn't a "backdoor" by default just by being a kernel level anti-cheat. Kernel level doesn't mean the program can do RCE and take arbitrary action upon your computer, the only code being executed by vanguard is the code it contains. No breach into vanguard would change that, only an update to vanguard would. And that applies for literally everything you download from any source that could possibly be compromised at the download stage to contain malware, like a normal league update which I'm sure you've never cared about allowing.

[@Valhryn]

"Fuck off champion mastery." 😂

[@ring7449]

literally killed me

[@Shiro_Sora]

💀

[@boynextdoor931]

Literally literally or exaggerated literally​@@ring7449

[@vibecatto]

Fucking loved that part

[@22phatthetoxicgamer93]

hey I have updated the game and for some reason now every time I press a key on my keyboard the game start to drop down to 1 fps the same does not go to my mouse and if I press a combo or hold a key the game just frozen do you guys know anything

[@b4rqe586]

my pc exploding after I say something inconvenient about ccp:

[@itsjustaline]

You are overreacting, here ,”Taiwan is a rea

[@daleryanaldover6545]

​@@itsjustalinedude has been taken, rip

[@chatheboosted]

I make a file call PDF file and kiddie stuff and am now waiting how long it will take for riot to call the police

[@sumperjump8353]

Ayoo kinda of a sus file, caught in 8k? 🤨📸

[@WholesomeVolibear]

​@@chatheboostedyou shouldnt do that....

[@Rivalrvn]

I couldn’t play league for 3 days :) (not a bad thing thanks vanguard)

[@jpuc5568]

Omfg stop bitching if you don’t like the game don’t play it so fucking annoying

[@minglin2814]

bro i keep forgetting that you 3 arent the same people

[@cccbbbaaa110]

PagMan addiction gone

[@Fenixx25]

Vanguard is trying to help you, nice!

[@adrianzawada6601]

@@minglin2814 who is the 3rd one?

[@Yasukeh]

The primary difference between Vanguard and any other anticheat is not that it runs 24/7, but that it can stop any other driver on a whim, functionally acting like an antivirus software. Every other AC will simply not let you get into a match if you have vulnerable drivers. Vanguard decides that it's more important than everything else, so it takes precedence over anything else. The majority of the tech issues people face is related to this fact. There is no reason why Vanguard can't shut itself down instead of shutting everything it doesn't like down.

[@coldicekiller1352]

yep, vanguard is extremely intrusive, when valorant came out i had a friend with razer headphones with drivers that Vanguard didn't like, instead of shutting itself or the game down it just decided to nuke the entire Audio input/output and the only fix was restarting 💀

[@abuck7909]

Dude I don’t know what the weird confliction is between Vanguard and Pubg but I literally can’t play Pubg without Vanguard running. I blue screen INSTANTLY if I try launching Pubg while Vanguard isn’t running. And if Pubg is already running and I close vanguard, instant blue screen still. You would think this program can only affect my PC while running but as long as it’s installed it can just turn off your computer whenever it wants

[@abonynge]

@abuck7909 That sounds more like one more issue with BattlEye. It is probably detecting something in your Kernel being modified when Vanguard is disabled and corrupts a system file trying to figure out if you're using a cheat. I wish every developer would just leave BattlEye to be forgotten. It's terrible at detecting cheats, and it causes countless problems for users. It's just a cheap solution to an expensive problem.

[@abuck7909]

@@abonynge it’s an issue with Vanguard. It is not Battleye’s issue to fix when Vanguard demands to be running 24/7 or even causing issues while not running but just simply installed on the PC. If Vanguard is asking to be constantly running during routine computer use, we have the right to ask that there be no conflicts between vanguard and other programs. Battleye causes no problems if you’re not running a battleye required game, Vanguard has shown it does.

[@abonynge]

@abuck7909 BattlEye causes tons of issues in tons of games for tons of reasons. But let's be mad at one more catalyst of BattlEye's faults instead of being mad at BattlEye. The crashing on your computer is almost 100% going to be BattlEye corrupting a file due to not being compatible with Vanguard. BattlEye has had compatibility issues with literally hundreds of softwares in the past for different reasons on different BIOS and OS. It's a poorly developed mess of code that is widely accepted as "good enough" You are right that BattlEye causes no issues when you aren't running a BattlEye game, but it also is one of the least effective anticheats on the market that has caused several systems to brick due to its faults.

[@mysticaldevotion863]

Vanguard not transmitting any data until a game starts does not mean shit since it can just save it temporarily and then transmit whatever it wants when your log into your session. Not saying it does but its not really an argument for Vanguard being safe.

[@supertzar1869]

It does exactly that. How else would it check if you are running cheats or not?

[@enzo--LoL]

@@supertzar1869 idk maybe like any other kernel anticheat? that only starts when you start the game? this thing is a fcking security liability, its just a question of time until s.o. hijacks it with malicious intent.

[@RandomNon-interestingguy]

thanks, wanted to say this but figured someone already pointed it out.

[@Rabestern]

Not to mention Riot is owned by Chinese company and, in China, if CCP says that company should do something for them they have to do it. Techincally they could sneak up changes in game update and steal your sensitive data.

[@MasterZebulin]

@@Rabestern Why hasn't anyone detected this as a red flag?

[@tantailofski2247]

End of the day, Vanguard stil packs Riot/League spaghetti code, and Riot recently fell "victim to a social engineering hacking attack". Even taking all the concerns about invasive software out of the way, the company is simply not reliable enough for anything kernel level 0. What's more, one of the main appeals, was that you could easily run the game, even on a potato, so everyone played it. It was popular because it was free and demanded very little from the players. The game thrived because of ease of use, and denying it will irreparably carve out a large amount of its support

[@bigpunk157]

If they fell to a social engineering attack, that means someone got into riot and could potentially take things like your IPs, credit card info, personal info, etc. This is 900x worse than vanguard because they would keep your credit card info on your account, so anyone that played in the past could be compromised if those records were pulled by the intruder. This isnt a riot specific issue, this can happen with literally any company.

[@eduardo_lopez9]

A solution that seems useful (don't trust me completely) is to uninstall vanguard and install it only when you are going to play so that it doesn't always start when you turn on the PC

[@fuzzy-02]

I hope so or nothing will change.

[@adrianbunea2006]

And vanguard is not really making the games less accessible

[@HollowR1130]

You're wrong. At this point there's no damage that can hurt League enough, this would've been true if it was in it's early days. You're actually being pretentious lol

[@tycarlock9690]

I tried out Vanguard, and I've already been running into scripters. They literally talk on forums about how Vanguard did basically nothing to stop them. And that was the whole point.

[@dedosdeceniza]

because they don't ban all scripters immediately so they generalize their shitty software and ban them on waves so they can't update it fast enough. they already said so themselves. banning all cheaters instantly just gives cheaters the info on what got them caught

[@frantavopicka5259]

No, the point was to get unlimited remote access to roughly 150,000,000 PCs. You might think it's a conspiracy theory but so was "facebook selling your data" back in early 2010's.

[@DONTLAUGH]

@@frantavopicka5259 They don't need vanguard to do that, they can just do that via league's client, you already give league full administrator permissions when you run it, lmfao clueless.

[@johnawara9719]

I'm 54 and my wife and I are VERY worried about our future, gas and food prices rising daily. We have had our savings dwindle with the cost of living into the stratosphere, and we are finding it impossible to replace them. We can get by, but can't seem to get ahead. My condolences to anyone retiring in this crisis, 30 years nonstop just for a crooked system to take all you worked for.

[@AlinaMathilda]

I feel your pain mate, as a fellow retiree, I’d suggest you look into passive index fund investing and learn some more. For me, I had my share of ups and downs when I first started looking for a consistent passive income so I hired an expert advisor for aid, and following her advice, I poured $30k in value stocks and digital assets, Up to 200k so far and pretty sure I'm ready for whatever comes.

[@johnawara9719]

@@AlinaMathilda That's actually quite impressive, I could use some Info on your FA, I am looking to make a change on my finances this year as well

[@AlinaMathilda]

@@johnawara9719 My advisor is MARGARET MOLLI ALVEY;

[@AlinaMathilda]

You can look her up online

[@TylerMohn-g9l]

@@AlinaMathilda The crazy part is that those advisors are probably outperforming the market and raising good returns but some are charging fees over fees that drain your portfolio. Is this the case with yours too?

[@Reac2]

Kernel level Anti Cheat is intolerable. Like ,you cannot tolerate it. The fact it has no network activity while you're not playing league is irrelevant, it's sitting in the back, can mess with your stuff and collect whatever it wants and then send any information it garnered when it's supposed to "legitimately" ping the server or when it finds something it wants, such as vulnerable data you don't want ANYONE knowing. And that's not even considering that even at best ,its still a sleeper agent. They can update it at any time or instruct it at any time to purposefully or accidentally brick your sh*t

[@RegrinderAlert]

That’s not the real danger. Auditing what the existing binary can do is fairly straightforward and would reveal whether or not it can ever look at unrelated files.

[@nonsense3586]

we can look at actions vanguard take. It's not something crawled deep and secret. It just has access. Yes that is a big power to give but if riot uses this power to leak our data, people would burn riot to ashes. If you want vanguard to work in upper layers, you will have to be okay to matching into scripters in like every 2 or 3 game. Yes people maybe can find a way to bypass vanguard too. But that will be so hard to do and maintain. Do you know what that means? script prices will go up so hard. And that means typical toxic bt.ch that gets triggered and downloads script won't be able to buy it anymore unless he gives 300 bucks monthly.

[@dedosdeceniza]

sad thing is, kernel level cheating IS a thing, and it's annoying that we can't do anything against it besides putting our pc's through fucking chemo

[@trahanddarkeyes5329]

And its good to point out that for people that really want to cheat is pretty easy to bypass it. Harder than other anti-cheats? Yeah, but pretty easy still. The benefit doesnt justify this bullshit.

[@sillypuppygurl]

all this kernel panic when the truth is any usermode app can spy on you the same

[@Ubspy]

Hey man, this is a great video. I just thought you should know that software running at the kernel level can hide internet traffic. It would be difficult to implement, but its entirely possible. The scary part about it is since its running at kernel level, there's no way we can know without monitoring internet traffic network wide on a completely separate device. The part where you show wireshark can be severely misleading without this information.

[@Ryscu]

Had a look into this and you’re completely right, added it into the corrections doc

[@riruvinter2012]

Was literally thinking this when watching the video. Was like ehm.. 😅 misinformation oh no Looks can be decieving, literally. If I want there to be no proof, there will be no proof. In the context of manipulating reality within a computer system through kernel-level access. With such control, one could distort perceptions and potentially assert their own definitions or identities within the system. Is basically what I'm saying. If I'm a virus but I can choose to not identify as a virus, is another analogy 😂

[@RegrinderAlert]

You can still extract the Vanguard binary and analyse it on another system without it possibly interfering with the audit process. It would show up really fast if it had those capabilities.

[@orbitalpotato9940]

All effective anticheats run at the kernel level.

[@battokizu]

@@orbitalpotato9940 Says who? it's effective at compromising your system sure, but not killing cheaters.

[@BDCDT-TranThanhTung]

For Tft player, you can use Emulator to play TFT mobile if you Anti-Vanguard

[@linaz.6694]

ty for saying this

[@frieselbee]

Which Emulator are you using? Im using WSA but it lags super hard :/

[@mklmyrs5454]

@@frieselbee bluestacks, knox, and recently google play games has a pc version with some games, probably you can play tft there

[@veni_vidi_victorian]

@@frieselbee Any emulator that allows you to run it with 4 cores and ~4GB memory. If you want specific names, I know it works fine on BlueStacks & LDPlayer. There's also developer emulators included in Android Studio, or just the emulator by itself called Google Play Games PC Developer Emulator.

[@MangaGamified]

For TFT player, MLBB has Magic Chess

[@riahisama]

Anybody defending Vanguard is your average consoomer, they consume the product without asking any question. It's the same people who download random programs off the internet, never check what runs in the background and wonder why they have a spyware on their PC.

[@valmiro4164]

You're re(s)tarded lmaoo. You already gave them permission to make changes on your PC the moment you installed League, they can inject whatever file they want into the client disguised as on of their regular patches. It's the same permission you give literally every app you install on your PC. If you're that paranoid then you shouldn't have a PC because even your OS is "spyware."

[@CR0WYT]

I think it comes down to people not wanting to be miserable in their games anymore, at least in the FPS department. Kernel level might be sketchy, but it has proven time and time again that the method works best, and now with the cheating market exploding recently, it seems to be the ONLY working method as any other competitive shooter that doesn't have a kernel level anti-cheat is plagued with spinbotters sniping you through spawn less than a second from the round starting and hijackers that can leak personal info anyways. Until something that can be as effective while being less intrusive comes around, kernel-level is the way to go if you care about competitive integrity. That or just stick to other genres of gaming until this issues is resolved.

[@valmiro4164]

You're the average "consoomer." You already gave them the permission to make changes on your computer, the same permission that you give every single app you install on your PC. They can inject whatever file they need disguised as one of their patches to "spy" on you. If you're that paranoid, then you shouldn't have a PC since your OS is also a "spyware."

[@GrammeStudio]

it's hilarious how some are equating vanguard to other anti cheats, unaware that Genshin Impact's anticheat was literally exploited to deploy ransomware. the attack wouldn't have been that effective if it wasn't for the fact that it utilised the anticheat's capability to disarm users' antivirus software

[@JohnnyTravolta]

Same goes for people that attack it. Sadly vanguard have to be in lol, why? Bcs people are toxic monkeys that needs to cheat in video games, riot would never install vanguard if only people wouldnt cheat. Vanguard is meh, but it the same time, what u can do about cheaters? And second topic, people already sell personal informations to everyone when they decide to share life on Facebook, instagram etc.

[@MrElgate]

There is something that isn't addressed by the video. "Is Riot trustworthy"? Now I personally do not believe that Riot wants to do something bad. What I am worried about is Tencent. By Chinese law, There is a requirement for Tencent to give access to all their systems and data. And Riot is has been bought by Tencent. So while I don't think Riot wants anything bad to happen, if China decide to do it, Riot can do nothing as they've ultimately created a rootkit on every computer that plays their game and given the keys to China. That's what worries me and why I simply refused to install it. It feels weird to no longer playing LoL, but HoTS isn't that bad now that I've given it a try.

[@SeeJade]

US Congress is actually addressing that. It apart of what they're doing with tiktok. The company must either have a non-majority of its shares held by a Chinese company, or be entirely unowned by a Chinese company. They are considering applying this to a wide selection of companies(including epic games and riot games). Personally, I think they probably will do it. Where I stand it, however, isn't here nor there

[@SpiceCh]

People see Tencent owning Riot and immediately think Riot is a Chinese company working under Chinese law when, in reality, Riot is an American company operating under American law, as was always the case. Vanguard isn't going to copy-paste your system to Riot's servers, and even if it did, Riot would be raided by the FBI and NSA the second someone at the company even spoke jokingly about transferring said non-existent data to China. People's extreme paranoia is reaching a fever pitch these days and it's getting really annoying to just how much public attention is given and wasted on clickbait outrage-farming headlines. It really reminds me of the times when everyone freaked out about dihydrogen monoxide before realizing it's just regular water by a different name. Vanguard isn't particularly scary because you use scary words like "Kernel level access" and then go on to mention how "root kits and spyware use kernel level access". Every important program on your computer runs with kernel level access, from your basic operating system to your anti-virus software. Hundreds of millions of people still put their trust in Kaspersky regardless of American politicians attempting to discredit it following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and if Vanguard was even remotely as much of a "security concern" as Kaspersky was made out to be, American politicians would've been out in force to discredit it just the same - and they haven't been. And while I'm not saying we should just blindly accept programs running with kernel level permissions by default, Vanguard has a legitimate reason to require this permission. It's not like it's Photoshop or Microsoft Word requiring kernel level access to verify that you didn't somehow trick the verification of the program.

[@xristoskoumpourlis1614]

so what? is china gonna steal your internet history?

[@professorryze3739]

Im too deep to stop playing. I like to play a bit of hots from time to time tho.

[@lucasbj7225]

you should be ashamed of playing blizzard game in 2024, even worse a dead game from blizz

[@sillyredsheep2421]

I had Vanguard on my PC already from playing Valorant. It might be the craziest coincidence ever, but the next time I started my PC after the update, I had weird graphical glitches all over my screen before even launching any games. I disabled Vanguard on startup, rebooted, and everything was fine. Again, could be a crazy coincidence but it definitely spooked me.

[@Onaterdem]

The only problem is that you cannot disable Vanguard on startup. You can only disable the tray icon. So yes, it was a coincidence.

[@glasslilacs]

Oh wait, could that be a possible cause? I've had these weird graphical glitches all the time when watching KZbin and stuff as well. Wow, thank you for a possible solution!

[@sillyredsheep2421]

@@Onaterdem You can disable it on startup by disabling Automatic start in services.

[@Onaterdem]

@@sillyredsheep2421 Did they recently add the option? Before, you had to run a bash script at boot to automatically quit Vanguard. There was no such easy way.

[@Fluffywuffy_]

@@Onaterdem Nope, it has been there for quite a while, my brother couldn't log in lol no matter how many times he rebooted, and it was because he disabled vanguard on startup Apparently (I'm no lawyer so don't take my word for it) Not giving people the ability to disable a kernel level program not necessary for the pc, from a third party company that collects data and such was quite... Illegal in many countries (specially Europe) so, they had to give players this or well, lose an entire playerbase

[@charon3444]

If a program causes a streamer PC to have 10% FPS drop, it causes big time performance decrease on my potato ;)

[@Shaco.]

If your PC can't run LoL in 2024 you should maybe consider getting a slighty less potato PC.

[@charon3444]

@@Shaco. not sure if it could, im not playing, i played my 5 rank games for the split and have the game deleted for 3 months now

[@gokushivum]

For one that isn't how it works. Two, even if it was, 10 percent of 1000 is 100 fps, 10 percent of 60 is 6

[@charon3444]

@@gokushivum running a program in the background will not consume a percantage of your computing power tho?

[@Aarvid_Hati]

@@Shaco. ok mama's boy

[@nicholasfigueiredo3171]

I got the same problem as LS the problem is the PC will black screen BEFORE the bios start so you can't even format the PC is literally bricked. I was able to save mine by installing the HD in another pc and removing vanguard from it but I doubt anyone who isn't tecnically savy would be able to do it

[@MystraDemon]

A friend showed me how easy it is to surpass vanguard by starting scrips over powerpoint. 👍

[@BabyKnxckz]

Vanguard does nothing really except increase false banns and not allow linux users or ppl with oldhardware its stupid

[@AllStarze_le_Chinard]

@@BabyKnxckz THX !!!! FINALLY SOMEONE WITH a brain capable of thinking !

[@JVM42069]

@@BabyKnxckz Yup just got another AFK ban due to being kicked out by Vanguard

[@GoldenTV3]

Is there a way to just play the game without vanguard? I'm not even a cheater, I just don't want this Chinese privacy nightmare installed.

[@MystraDemon]

no but I think you could try to run it in a virtual box

[@shiro5157]

not really sure if a ~300 fps drop is "barely noticeable"

[@keleee]

yeah most players casually play on 1000 fps

[@dedosdeceniza]

@@keleee not like we can see more than 30 fps ourselves. the numbers above 200 literally mean nothing.

[@BoneWalker]

@@dedosdeceniza 60* If I can notice the difference between 40fps and 60fps, Then yes the difference between 60 and 30 is visible.

[@RuneKatashima]

@@dedosdeceniza The difference between 30 and 60 frames is 100%. At 200 frames you'll need another 200 frames, 400, to notice a similar amount. But yeah 200 to 230 won't see much difference. A drop from 1000 frames to 800 is only a 20% drop. Which is 48 frames when you were previously at 60. Not that bad, you'll probably notice a bit. I don't think anyone need more than 480 frames imo.

[@geftsu]

@@dedosdeceniza Insanely bad take. Try playing a game at 30 fps, 60 fps and 144 fps (on a good monitor). Tell me if you see the difference.

[@randomaccount559]

So your "fix" to vanguard bricking someone's pc is "oh if you don't want that to happen just close vanguard". Okay then how will i play the game, my pc has literally started crashing randomly ever since i installed vanguard. When i boot into my linux OS everything works as intended. But in windows OS when i have vanguard running the system is very unpredictable. Sometimes it crashes my pc and completely locks down my motherboard, forcing me to turn off the pc from the power supply switch. Sometimes it just kicks me out of the game because of "vanguard error" and then i get a timer because "oh you dodged the lobby, you shouldn't do that"

[@varens7702]

- 10% fps drop is not "no fps lose" - Kernel code can definitely send data over network without system application like wireshark showing it, you can only be sure it wont send anything when you analyze network trafic from outside of pc, like on router - Data is encrypted so you have no idea whats send

[@kingderpington6082]

just like all other anti cheats in existence today....

[@varens7702]

@@kingderpington6082 about with part you mean "all anti cheats in existance today", i can create one right now and your comment wont be true even if you are true right now

[@Salzui]

@@varens7702 dont be so nitpicky you jsut cant stand your atgument loss, any anticheat that is at capable of at least a lttle bit, does things this way.

[@varens7702]

@@Salzui i am not nitpicky, i also didnt state any argument about how vanguard behaves, i only pointed problems in author arguments, your and @kingderpington6082 comments have zero sense in relation to my comment

[@kingderpington6082]

​@@varens7702 Ok let me amend my previous statement becuase you are incapable of inferring basic information. All anticheats used by popular multiplayer games with the exception of vac.

[@maverickbonato8164]

I ain't restarting my pc every time I wanna play league and don't want to deal with all the horror stories I've seen on Reddit. Me and my whole group that have been playing since 2011 just uninstalled, it's too much.

[@RocoPwnage]

Lmao bro quit a game after 13 years because of reddit fearmongering

[@aspect_ow]

@@RocoPwnage lol fr, i mean its valid, only if they also refuse to play every other multiplayer game that curently exists

[@notGeist]

@@RocoPwnage 13 years wasted because he listened to some 14 year old on Reddit that just repeated what his friends friend's older brother told him on the playground.

[@aukora129]

If you've never fucked with the internals of your computer and you just follow the download instructions nothing will happen. Maybe you will need to restart your pc a few times to get everything working but thats it. You also don't need to restart your pc everytime unless you actually believe vanguard is gathering data on you when league isn't running, which is provably untrue.

[@nitramx1470]

Don’t listen to the Chinese dickriders, W for you, W for your friend group. Personally, I’ve found solely watching the pro scene to be plenty enjoyable. I’m not going to say it’s a bad game, but what is undeniable, is that it brings out the worst in people.

[@PS3PCDJ]

It's not necessarily about sending data, but about the fact that it has FULL access to your PC and your private data.

[@narpwa]

true but if it doesn't transmit it there is no issue but I agree nothing else than drivers and the system should run on the karnel level. Also what if one day riot games decide to update vanguard to transmit your data, most people don't have the required knowledge to know that this is an issue and will let the default settings. who control the defaults control the way we use things

[@vasatruhl]

Any app with admin rights can access pretty much everything on your pc anyways

[@denhawken]

Eh most hackers and shady fed people say that... which one are you?

[@PS3PCDJ]

@@denhawken ??

[@denhawken]

@@PS3PCDJ did I stutter?

[@ibragimowbekhan0987]

>Still no report cases There WERE, but Riot blocks any reddit post about them, and are creating eho-room

[@lanceroygames]

The fact that I have to restart my PC anytime I close Vanguard outside of a League of Legends environment is pretty unreasonable. You shouldn't have to have an anti cheat for a video game run on your computer at all times.

[@Salzui]

then tell all the cheaters and reuire pinky promise that they stop doing nasty stuff before launching the game

[@lanceroygames]

@@Salzui I think the point is being missed. No other anti cheat I've used requires that I start it up with my PC. It's one thing to start up with the game then shut off after closing the game. It's another to have to have it run at all times in order to play the game.

[@Cryoptic_]

@@lanceroygames then dont play. vote with ur actions. u only have to restart to play the game. u can have vanguard off at all times other than when u play league. we shouldnt be expected to deal with this, but real life isnt fair. noone is a fan of kernel level anti cheats. noone is a fan of the consequences of poor cyber security. in a perfect world we obv wouldnt need it. but we sure as hell dont live in one. its a video game. the requirements to play it is clear. say no, then dont play. u have a choice, use it. the fact that it works as it does (needing to be done before windows boot) is important, its one of the things that makes vanguard better then the others at what it does. but ofc, its a shit cycle. cheaters go deeper, so security needs to aswell. blame the cheaters for needing an anti cheat in the first place.

[@lanceroygames]

@@Cryoptic_ I've already stopped playing pretty much so there's that. Idk man. I don't think the boot with PC is necessary. There wasn't really that many cheaters in league to begin with. Over the last 9 years I've played league I've probably only ran into like 10 scripters total. So seems kinda overboard.

[@Cryoptic_]

​@@lanceroygames whats deemed "necessary" is up to ur definitions as a developer really. u could go with an anti cheat that is very non invasive, but u would have tons of cheaters. is it even "necessary" to have one at all? probably, but that means theres a line drawn somewhere. riot draws their line for their product. also, there do have been a lot of cheaters in league, especially closet ones, or light ones like vision in fog of war. idk if u read the article, but its been as bad as 1 in every 5 games with a cheater. and thats whats detected, there is more, way more than false positives. hard scripters is rare, just like how hard aimbots are rather rare now too. its somewhat easier to detect the hard stuff yk. but the smaller ones, that aim to assist, give u more information than u should... those are sneaky and hard to see. think about this. would u ever notice an enemy who always knows when u have ur flash? one that knows when ur cooldowns are?? would u realistically be able to notice that they have information in fog of war?? or even softer scripts to help dodge skillshots? they can be rly hard to notice. real hard.

[@morticiax540]

I haven't been able to play since Vanguard launched. My computer runs terribly and I can't run anything.

[@kallebak5792]

my computer runs fine, but cant play since vanguard update either, so cancer want to play arena so bad ):

[@madsonluiz2082]

same, uninstalled right after, not worth the time fixing

[@Ranto294]

I'll one up you on vanguard message thingy - even after that one update couple of months ago, you still could play from Windows 7, by queuing up via profile - rank - info about rank - queue up ranked game - queue up whatever you want. So yeah, they just disabled play button, but still allowed you to play, for some reason (unless i misunderstood these patch notes about Win 7 restriction?)

[@dedosdeceniza]

because they hadn't put vanguard on the game yet, but they wanted to make it clear that you wouldn't be able to play anymore, so they disabled the giant PLAY button. Like ok, if you find a loophole to play for 5 more days that's nice, but it's not going to work forever.

[@motormann2083]

damn i gotta say the quality of your videos has significantly improved over the last year. glad to see that

[@ShashaParallax]

I have first hand experience of vanguard messing with my PC. One day I started getting BSOD at random times, I couldn't figure out why as the bsod itself was glitchd, but the dump windows creates after a crash always pointed towards the kernel, still couldn't figure out why. One day after 2-3 months of experiencing this, I just randomly decided to exit Vanguard and my pc immediately crashed; I had stumbled upon the reason for the crashes.

[@El_Bellota]

I uninstalled as soon as Vanguard launched. Thanks riot 🥰

[@awesomedoge2935]

Same

[@Luxumis]

you didnt lier

[@oken586]

I say the same thing but when they show faker event i install agian

[@BlackLavender444]

@@LuxumisI did, but I'm saving up for a mac so I can reinstall without Vanguard 😂 Can't risk having root kit due to my work, but league is still my favorite game.

[@Catffeine_Cafe]

Literally zero reason to uninstall League other than you lack understanding of technology and this video just explained that.

[@Kroutonz1585]

The one thing I've noticed, is that my displayed fps remains roughly the same, the actual in-game fps fluctuates wildly on my mid-range PC while still displaying stable fps

[@abbyfromirs]

knowing how uninteresting league players are, it'd feel great to be spied on... at least someone is looking out for me when my jungler wouldn't

[@salmonroe5608]

problem is, if there is a security alert and riot fucks up, since vanguard has access on a kernel level, if you have registered passwords or info on your computer they will instantly be able to be stolen . Connected to your bank account on your computer ? >Well I hope you have double confirmation when you buy something online cause you're about to get drained. But i get the feeling.

[@abbyfromirs]

@@salmonroe5608 lots of games are getting that ratting issue from mw2 recently, its very scary tbh but even though vanguard is so suspicious with what it does its still **slightly** better than most other anti-cheat systems... except when i have to restart even though the mf is already running

[@seanorange5633]

well goddamn!

[@salmonroe5608]

@@abbyfromirs Yeah. Honestly, i am buying a laptop, so that i can uninstall league from my main computer and get it there. Yes it will literally be a 200€ expense because of vanguard. 200€ I could have spent on riot content, (i Usually pay around 50€ per year on riot games) but ain't paying for shit for 4 years because of vanguard.

[@thaib2724]

@@salmonroe5608 i will help them search for that money

[@davo4074]

"any noticeable extent" he has after 100-200 fps is clearly missing, never once did it go back over 1000 while dropping to 800 like cmon bro stop licking Rito toes 😆

[@weirdcat8373]

Ok so. VANGUARD KILLED MY WIFI, AND A L S O *CORRUPTED THE FILES IN A FEW OF MY STEAM GAMES??????!!!!* WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS PROGRAM?!?!?!??!?? I HAD TO UNINSTALL LOL AND VANGUARD 3-4 TIMES TO GET RID OF IT TOO. FUCK RIOT

[@Ehetere]

Aside from the general concerns about the level of invasiveness required for this, I haven't seen much discussion about the fact that this software also has to (reliably) interact with the Riot client. I've lost two games already from what appears to be a Riot Client error where it loses connection to Vanguard during the game. The only message it sent was 'Vanguard event' with the option to hit okay, and any attempt to reconnect the game prompts a message saying 'Vanguard must be running'. Vanguard, unsurprisingly, is in fact running just fine in the system tray. In one instance I was able to restart my Riot client and it let me back in for the briefest moment to see my team had surrendered, and in the other instance I had to restart my entire PC to the same effect. Nevermind whether Vanguard is operating correctly, it's a major point of failure for the Riot client which isn't the most stable piece of software at the best of times. I raised support tickets for both instances including all my logs/videos of the incident occuring, and only received a canned response saying to reinstall the client/Vanguard. Two of the other people I play LoL reguarly with have experienced the same error/issue. There is zero acknowledment on Riot's end of any problems this new requirement causes with their own buggy software.

[@Tada_Room]

My main problem with Vanguard - is that after I downloaded it my laptop started dropping FPS in every game I play. No matter what type of game, no matter if Riot Client or League Client is active. I played freaking Hearthstone Battlegrounds and still got occasional freezes by dropping the FPS to 0 for a few seconds. It is more frustrating in League when I can't even see what's happening in the game for 3 seconds after I kill the enemy and when it stops freezing I see a gray screen and don't know anything that happened during those 3 secs. I updated all my drivers, cleaned up the cooler and even checked the GPU and CPU performance during the game and it wasn't higher that 50-60%. All my visual settings are set on minimum and still it just freezes. And it all started after downloading that cursed anti-cheat!

[@DarkosaDarkRave]

Vanguard likes to kick me out of the client after almost every game, telling me vanguard isnt running. However it happens quiet often that my Windows slows down and takes ages to load something while vanguard is running. Its not always like this but always after it kicked me out of league

[@Haphsaf]

I played league for 6 years, and I really didn't want to uninstall, but I began noticing terrible changes in my PC. It kept lagging and overheating when playing league which never happened before since I played on the lowest settings. I wasn't so bothered with vanguard before either but then I saw Mutahar's video about it and it really changed my perspective. People need to watch that before they truly come to the conclusion that having a kernel level software is fine to have on your personal system. Especially those people who don't have windows 11 or tpm.

[@Salzui]

i do beleive you're a troll

[@Trigger-ZX]

@@Salzui *ahem* no you.

[@corporateturtle6005]

@@Salzui Source: Trust me bro. 🤡

[@Salzui]

@@corporateturtle6005 You come with source question mark to me? he is obc trolling, having not heard the video or fed with other false info and scary wordings from people making stuff up, not just things possible but nobody obc daring to do but with outright impossible.claims

[@corporateturtle6005]

@@Salzui Show me the proof of your claims about a random commenter you know nothing about. I'll wait.

[@biglittledude496]

"my lively hood is impacted by the popularity of a game that requires spyware to be installed, so I'm going to downplay the existence of that cancer" Fkubuddy

[@joypiccahu868]

Vanguard finally made me quit league, no regrets.

[@denhawken]

Bye hacker!

[@RandomXse1245]

@@denhawkentake your meds low elo delulu

[@denhawken]

@@RandomXse1245 ok hacker

[@joypiccahu868]

@@denhawken Lol you submit to foreign governments.

[@denhawken]

@@joypiccahu868 ok hacker thief.

[@notazombie...notatall8577]

I hate this horrible thing so much, riot should make so it doesn't run when league isn't open! Like stop with your stupid anti-cheat that's running all the time. I need my pc to perform in other tasks too, and ever since i installed Vanguard, my performance dropped, but when i uninstal it, and make sure it's wiped from my system it goes back to normal.

[@facelessmonkey6545]

I left league in January for dota I won't lie I miss my taliyah support but learning and playing dota has actually been so much fun and recommend everyone to try dota

[@DamianLamier]

Dota is a dogshit. Saying this as former player with almost 10 years exp. If you want to leave lol, better leave it for something better, like real life.

[@skyisthela]

that game is so hard to learn tho

[@facelessmonkey6545]

@DamianLamier we all welcome to our own thoughts I've had amazing games and had no where near the toxic games I get in league. I actually think dota is a moba done right could improve like anything but I don't think it's a bad game compared to my experience with league but it your opinion and I respect it

[@DamianLamier]

@@facelessmonkey6545 It's pretty funny, because in 4 years in the league I've never once met a single person who wanted to fuck my mother for not finishing a minion or accidentally miss a spell like I did in dota in 4 games out of 10. And that's all I heard in voice chat, which thankfully isn't in the league. Given your little experience in dota, you have yet to meet many potential stepfathers. Gl hf!

[@Lodit24]

@@DamianLamier If you compare it to League it's ten times better. Nothing is perfect, but DOTA is a whole lot better than League, if you'd only want perfect games you would enjoy very few games I think

[@maxelano6467]

I remember a year ago, I was playing valorant quite a lot, which you already need vanguard for. One day vanguard didnt seem to notice that it had already started up, so it opened again, but still didnt recognize itself and this repeated and every time the new app would take up 9% of my (I believe it was) memory. After a few minutes, there were so many vanguards running that my gaming laptop would just shutdown and restart to start the loop all over again. Spent a few hours trying to find how and to delete vanguard since I couldnt use my laptop anymore. Hated to hear it was coming back, but for now issues dont seem to have returned

[@ehhhhhhhh2233]

Imagine doing everything you can to make less people to play your game.

[@Chrissy717]

This is an insane comment. After the source code leaked, League was unplayable for months with several pros attacking riot on all fronts. This was never meant to happen, this was a reaction, nothing more.

[@YouTube-Channn]

Imagine thinking people actually stopped playing league because vanguard, even everyone that complained about it or said they’d stop because of it continued

[@calarakien]

​@@KZbin-Channn literally my entire friend group dropped the game and switched to Dota.

[@pluckinearchive2766]

​@@calarakienMine just play Wildrift instead and realize that "League Mobile" are actually kinda fun.

[@chonkyboi._.]

​@@calarakienthis is a blatant lie. Not everyone in your friend group would be dumb enough to call it a day on a game you've been playing for years

[@arsparker9856]

As it starts on the startup, you would never launch wireshark fast enought if it launches before you even logging in to your windows user.

[@kkshinichi]

Vanguard is the reason why I don't play League in PC anymore. I now exclusively play it in my Mac

[@charlybessette9818]

No vanguard on mac?

[@kkshinichi]

Yep no vanguard there

[@charlybessette9818]

@@kkshinichi damn I think you just made me buy a mac lmao

[@kkshinichi]

go even for a Mac Mini. That thing can climb to 240fps on League while only sipping below 30W (my gaming laptop is using its full 200W to achieve that) on very High graphics, all while not natively running it (it is still Intel version running Rosetta 2).

[@libertybelllocks7476]

why no vanguard on mac? Whats a mac i could get that would get me playin league comparable to playing on my gaming laptop now.

[@Chris-eh8mi]

I'll share my experience briefly here. I installed and rebooted. As far as I could tell, everything was correct. I loaded into a game and had 0 fps. I got a leaver penalty for it. I did some googling and didn't find anything useful, so I restarted again and tried once more. It worked. I played some games and things seemed fine. Then I closed vanguard when I was done. I came back to play the next day and vanguard did not turn back on when I launched league, despite telling me it was functioning, and I had 0fps again. Fully unplayable. Another leaver penalty. So I restarted again, thinking it would fix the issue. No dice. And that's where I'm at with it. It's poorly implemented and clunky, and I hate it. I'm not interested in fumbling with their shitty system and restarting and reinstalling and etc etc... fuck all of that. I just won't play league anymore.

[@xzyami]

i wanna share my experience too. I installed n stuff and thats it. nothing changed at all.

[@joaoandrade7911]

Why does this feels like Riot gave you a metric fuckton of money for you to shill on their anticheat? Anyway, i think that vanguard is actually amazing, since I won't ever give Kernel access just to play a game, it means I'm free from this hellscape called Summoners Rift. Riot is finally thinking about their costumer's wellbeing!

[@brianviktor8212]

I played League in the past with friends. Just a few months ago I played it again for a while. I am glad I'll never have to consider playing it again. It's already long uninstalled.

[@Dontatellversace]

I stopped creating custom skins when Vanguard was announced to come to league. Now that there is a slight chance I might be able to continue doing that (I play on EUW, not PH servers) I am just so insanely happy.

[@Wazonowsky]

Now for the fun part of what we now know, 1. Vanguard is indeed stopping drivers it detects "potential threats" that means some drivers that may be necessary for your system to work if it just does oonga boonga. Compared to any other commonly used kernel level anti cheat it doesn't just block you from the game when that happens, instead it decides for you to stop them 2. All other kernel level anti cheats somehow have no reason to run 24/7 and don't require restarts, they just use hooks to the kernel driver that is asleep for the time being, which btw allows you to monitor if some malicious party is using it for other activity when you don't play the game since it should be asleep 3. Vanguard got bypassed after 2 days, and riot already got caught multiple times lying about statistics and there's like 99% probability the "cheaters" graph they're using is carefully crafted with them internally stopping any work regarding fighting cheaters in the game a year before vanguards release, not to mention it's combining scripters and bots running on co-op vs ai, which are 2 entirely different issues with one being a gigantic overshadow for the other one... 4. Riot said themselves that you might get banned by Vanguard, if you cheat in other NON RIOT related games, which further proves the point that it does in fact monitor your activity outside of league or valorant even if it doesn't immidieatly sends it to the server, in fact most software sending 24/7 network requests with kernel access could be detected as malware that's why they prob avoided it

[@IBassGaming]

I agree with everything except for point 4... well technically at least. I'm honestly too lazy to get into the technical details and you can research it further yourself if you're curious, but depending on how the cheats are implemented, you can indeed get banned if you go into a match protected by a good anticheat if you cheated in another game previously without 24/7 monitoring. One example is CS2. If you cheat on the official servers there's almost no chance you'll get caught. If you go into a faceit match afterwards (3rd party matchmaking with kernel 0 anticheat) without restarting your PC you will get banned most of the time. And contrary to Vanguard, the faceit anticheat and it's service aren't even running before launching the client. So you could get banned the second you load into a League/Valorant match due to a cheat you launched and completely closed earlier. They are indeed able to detect that cheats have been executed on the machine before the anticheat ever launched... assuming it was in the same session, as in the PC wasn't restarted. TLDR: Technically they can monitor programs you've launched earlier, but they do not have to monitor 24/7 and probably don't do it either.

[@toseeupload8855]

A lot of people thanking Riot for Vanguard... Thanks to Vanguard, alot of people have finally quit the game! Good news. Not because of security risk ofc, but they literally can't play the game.

[@jerzycup9069]

I had to reinstall Vanguard twice before it started working properly. On the first installation, everything was looking ok but for some weird reason, my PC was restarting about once every game. And the weirdest part it kind of did not restart the PC but just Windows (there was no BIOS screen). I reinstalled and this time once I got into the game I had literally 2 fps, it seemed to be monitor-related as the game was showing my capped 240 fps and it was also the issue outside of League. Only after 2nd reinstallation everything started working properly. My problem with Vanguard is whether Riot will take any responsibility for Vanguard leading to any hardware-related issues.

[@JVM42069]

"When vanguard is open Im getting around the same fps" *shows a 100-200 fps drop* (most people play at 200 fps).

[@PockitGames]

As a software engineer and someone who loves stuff like this on the side let me say that, there's a lot you missed about Vanguard and just the research in this video felt very shallow. It was well explained but it just ends up drowing in the pool of all Vanguard videos that are around. There are great comments in this same video of people pointing out things that i think you should read. Thanks for the content!

[@icyjoe]

if it only transmits data when the game is open then why even have it launch on startup and better yet why not launch it with the game. Since Ez anticheat is also kernal level and it only launches with the game I don't see why this isn't possible.

[@breakpoint1875]

Its because the driver still does work when the system starts, it basically verifies the "boot state" then scans to see whether the system state when the client is launched is different.

[@Salzui]

That just means Ez anticheat will not be able to detect certain super-sophisticated cheats.

[@dedosdeceniza]

because Kernel level cheating is a super next level thing. Like "this file is a normal file until i open noteblock then it's a cheating app and this program doesn't KNOW this was once a noteblock, so now i open the game and it still sees it as a noteblock". Vanguard on the other hand would be like: "I see this is a noteblock, but the code for it clearly changed once it opened". It's obviously more complicated than that, and it's more of a "this thing that handles the light on my motherboard is actually a cheating software" but yeah.

[@luka188]

This was tested by The PC Security channel, and he showed how Vanguard is always active from the moment you start up your PC, doesn't turn off when you turn the game off and still sends data and uses system resources even when the game is not running. It gets enabled on start up, and cannot be disabled in startup settings, because it embeds itself in the kernel that deep. Good luck with this spy ware on your computer to play a crap video game lmao!

[@MisterAssasine]

@@luka188 you can easily disable it in startup settings. The video you have just watched showed that in does not send data when game is not running. Everything else was clearly communicated by riot.

[@opossums-will-sing]

I uninstalled before Vanguard ever reached my system. It's a massive shame, because I'll lose friends I've had for 7+ years as a result. I just don't play League enough to warrant always-on anti-cheat, and the additional risk of Riot getting compromised again is not insignificant enough to ignore. Also, it won't stop hackers. I've done some DMA stuff with Arduinos before, and that's the approach that I'd take if I was a cheater. $100 or so in hardware costs is nothing in comparison to cheat prices these days.

[@chonkyboi._.]

You can always turn off vanguard from the tray icon. There's no way people are this dense

[@dedosdeceniza]

basically, if you're from a well off country, you're fucked. Here in las/lan tho, no one is going to spend 100 dollars to cheat on a 40 minute game lol THANKFULLY, inflation is the only way to stop cheaters now.

[@Stealth86651]

Man, I just remember so many people getting genuine warnings about exactly this and calling it 'fearmongering". Honestly any time I've heard that it's when people just don't want to accept a logical reality and ended up being wrong lol.

[@Natsuki89]

So vanguard doesn't seem to use your network while the client is closed, but that doesn't mean it isn't collecting data that will send when you open the game. I mean, if it isn't checking for stuff before you open the client why does it need to run from the booup of the computer? And talking about performance, I play on a laptop and not having big issues so far, but I did notice a drop in performance and sudden input lags when my browser is open while playing cos I'm listening to music for example

[@Onaterdem]

"I mean, if it isn't checking for stuff before you open the client why does it need to run from the booup of the computer?" To make sure that it keeps its own memory integrity, otherwise a cheat program which runs at boot could camouflage itself or mess with Vanguard. So yes, it does check for stuff, but it's not spyware. They don't need a kernel level anticheat to spy on you, that's bullsh*t spread by tech-illiterate tinfoil-hat people. Edit: I really don't like Vanguard, it's invasive and unnecessary, I uninstalled League. But that doesn't change the fact that it's not spyware. It's just a security risk, in case of a breach. :)

[@pretzels1208]

they did say the reason why vanguard runs from boot. "so it can attest to the fact that nothing's happened between windows loading and the game starting that would break the operating system". Now why does vanguard need to do this and no other anti cheat needs to? I don't know. Seems a little suspicious.

[@pedronabais1456]

@@pretzels1208 yes, and by definition that means it analysis data and memory before opening the game, that's the funny part, so much of riot's point is how it only opens with league while they silently admit it does in boot and start up too XD

[@aspect_ow]

@@pretzels1208 theres a reason why vanguard (specifically for valorants anticheat) is DRASTICALLY better than the other anticheats on the market. If you're up to date on any other multiplayer games theres huuuuuuge cheating problems going on in CS 2, Apex Legends, EFT, etc. vanguards not that much different. If you dont like it you dont like it, but I dont understand why everyone is so heated when its realistically not much different from other anticheats.

[@CarloKuza]

@@pretzels1208 the thing is other kernel AC do the exact same, FACEIT can be an example, FACEIT AC runs in boot aswell(which is why it also asks for a reboot), and needs a powershell command to actually disable it (or use the dropdown menu "disable" option) which just like Vanguard, requires a reboot for it to work again. when programs are given memory (RAM) addresses to work with, for any process running, they are interfaced with virtual addresses which are divided in user space and kernel space, as to stop the user from accessing things they shouldn't: Kernel space is where things such as the barebone OS operations are executed at the lowest level, and it can manage both kernel space and user space memory; User Space is where the common programs (the game, your browser, etc.) runs, in their own user space in the memory. User space programs cant access or change memory handled by the kernel space, which is why some cheats (looking at you csgo/cs2 cheat devs) also load in boot in kernel space, so that they can send signals as a different mouse or keyboard and access game process memory and still remain undetected (this is a dumb down, there are other things which i wont go in depth about otherwise this would be wayyyyy longer), a User Space AC could detect User Space Cheats, but it would fail on delivering the same if the cheats ran in kernel space, while a kernel space AC could check in both spaces. Most ACs(not necessarily requirin kernel space for this), besides checking stuff in real time while the game is open (lets say, to check if game memory has been accessed or tampered with), they also check for other things that aren't directly touching valorant's process and/or memory , example would be a triggerbot that takes a screenshot every frame on the main screen around your crosshair to shoot when it finds the color of the enemy outlines. In this case, they look for certain patterns, certain actions being done, certain files being present on disk or in a USB and whatnot, by sending not the pure content of the file on your pc, but a Hash of it, think of it as a token which uniquely represents the digital structure of the file, without having to actually pass the content within it, which their server then can receive, and compare to a list of hashes saved of detected cheats, programs, anything that riot or whatever company that handles the AC has flagged as smth used by malicious users to gain the unfair advantage, hence the possibility of these sort of "files" being sent to the server when the game opens even though they were logged by the AC beforehand. That being said, wireshark also wouldn't see al the kernel ac operations sending data over IP to the server, as Wireshark is a userspace program that uses the system APIs to interface with the kernel, and as such it would only capture those to do with userspace, so something at the router would be required to see what and when exactly Vanguard or AC in turn actually sends things over IP. Now, I can also not like kernel ac and how invasive they are (HELL, I'm a nut that dual boots linux for everything that isnt gaming, so that i can keep windows just for the game stuff), but unfortunately in this cat and mouse chase between game devs and cheat devs, its currently the most effective way to filter out as much as possible to give a fair experience to all players, and as a company that wants to make money and keep their players mostly happy, I can see why they would go to such lengths... ON the other hand , while I understand why one shouldn't trust a company owned by Tencent(100% agree with you there), I personally dont think it as a problem of the Invasive kernel AC that logs something all the time(as they could do the same with even a user space AC, just less effectively) but more of the company, which to be fair also applies to all social media platforms most people have on their phones anyway (tiktok, instagram, facebook, etc.) or at this point even Microsoft and Apple with all this Data Collecting and AI stuff shoved down our throats with cortana, siri or whatnot which is also part of the reason that i use just windows for games and linux for everything else (besides just my work stuff being done in my linux boot day to day). TLDR Riot's vanguard's not alone in shady stuff that isnt reallty all that shady on the ac side, and not trusting the company is a perfectly fine thing to do, but at that point one shouldnt trust Easy anti cheat, battle eye, or any ac that takes monitor screenshots(wallhack), sends files hash to server, and so on...

[@MrReskillman]

The main differences between Vanguard and the others Kerner Anticheat is that Vanguard runs 24/7 even if you don't run the game, is a driver that remains active unless you stop it from the boot-options and reboot your PC, there are a lot of videos around that show when Vanguard is open (even without having LoL/Valorant running) is conflicting with other games/tools causing FPS drop or other DLL conflict issues. + Vanguard can stop other drivers or processes (!!!!), if a driver or process is not compatible with Vanguard guidelines then it will be stopped automatically by not even say it, is done in the background, so if you use your PC for other things (mainly developing) expect problems. Worth to mention as well that Riot's moderators are basically lying on Reddit by saying that Vanguard is not causing any issues when a lot of people are reporting compatibility errors or hardware issues since Vanguard's implementation (you can find a lot of video around YT about this).

[@They_Call_Me_HeartFace]

Not even God or Devil knows how relieved im feeling right now with this controversy. I uninstalled everything related to Riot literally first day of this year before this shit hit us and Riot really doing a good work for me to not come back ever in their lifetime, just praying other ex-players like me feels the same way.

[@Kfo221]

Bye

[@kogmawgaming]

I've been around the League scene for a long time and a lot of OG players feel the exact same. So many other people I know that have been playing since seasons 3 and 4 are using Vanguard as a reason to quit the game for good. Sadly we just have to realize Riot doesn't care about us as a playerbase, we already bought skins and don't spend as much money on the game as new players so why would they care about what we think

[@big_DAD_wolf]

​@@Kfo221enjoy ur overpriced skins and impossible to compete battle pass

[@shooflies]

@@big_DAD_wolf The ones that have no impact on the game and i can choose to get or not with little consequence? I'm sorry but if that's your gripe is that you don't think this entirely optional thing is worth it, you either lacked impulse control and got them anyways or greatly overvalue them. They're cosmetics. That's it. The battlepass is optional. You don't get IE faster with it or new runes. What are you complaining about

[@pluckinearchive2766]

​@@shoofliesThis is the SF Thirdstrike effect where people who doesn't or not invested into a platform have such a big opinion about it that is entirely just ilogical but we can't do anything about it.

[@nitram.9621]

6:38 the problem is that you don't know when someone will want it to start sending something. That's what it was always about. It is a menace. It's like sitting face to face with a lion for 5 second and entirely rulling out that it will jump at your throat at some point. It's not because for the week vanguard has been running nothing bad happened, that an exploit will not be found someday which will wreck your pc. 6:50 those (eac) don"t startup at system launch and close as soon as you leave the game. Yet see what hackers have been able to do to people's pc.

[@rpscorp9457]

Its not if, its when. People say oh well this game has kernal level anticheat..and im like, yeah this game only has 120,000 players. League has millions and millions of players...The scale is unlike anything else which means BIG MONEY to warez groups.

[@pablo-pi6qz]

Wow, that quick comparison paired with a literal SUPERCOMPUTER really helped distinguish whether Vanguard actually disrupts the frames! Have you ever thought about how it affects players with a really low-end machine? :^|

[@frantavopicka5259]

Exactly. 10% difference on a 1000 fps computer is going from 1000 to 900. On a PC that can barely play at 60 it's gonna be like 54... which is definitely noticeable.

[@frantavopicka5259]

The biggest argument against vanguard is that it's unneeded and ineffective at what it does. (also the difference between 1000 and 920 fps is measurable... so it takes away some performance and might make some weaker PCs stutter)

[@narpwa]

I think the fact that it has karnel level access to your pc aka it can do and access everything on your pc is bigger

[@MangaGamified]

Do you guys follow laws? Riot does too! CCP literally has a law that that requires any and all CCP citizens and it's bodies(that includs companies) to require them to help them spy, most popular ones are data mining in their softwares, aka spying.

[@chonkyboi._.]

Ok but would you rather play with cheaters?

[@Mempler]

Pretty sure the US has a similar law lol, otherwise the fbi would have nothing to do

[@pedrofernandes3381]

I've had vanguard since valorant came out. i always aknowlage if I'm going to play league or Valorant and close vanguard if not needed. Since it merged with league it has blue screened my pc twice as I pressed to close the anticheat.

[@Kae_S]

The problem with vanguard stands that Riot had their Source Code stolen yet without making any improvements/changes to their client first they’ve basically pushed a back door into every PC that has League(one of the most played games). Not to mention, only thing you checked was if it was sending something while League was closed. We still can’t check how much data it collects while League isn’t open and how much data it sends when open. There’s an additional risk of Riot taking ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY if someone does hack into PCs using this back door. There would be way less pushback had they ever updated the Godforsaken ancient client.

[@aukora129]

Thats not how backdoors work, stop saying things you dont understand. Even if someone got the vanguard code, unless they had full access to all of riot's servers to the point they could push a patch for vanguard, they couldn't make vanguard do anything. Vanguard is not actively controlled by riot, they cant just make it spy on you if they say so. If someone did get access to that point, they would be able to push a normal league patch containing malware even without vanguard and take over your pc that way. None of this is a new risk, this is a risk you take every time you download a file or program and every time you update any program. You are horribly misinformed and the fact people like you get to make public opinion is horrifying. We also absolutely can check how much data it is gathering when league is closed, because we can see the program isn't moving any data within the computer. With that in mind, if you really don't trust it, just close literally everything except league when you play, and you'll be fine since it can't collect data when league is closed and it can't collect data on anything when league is open since you wont have anything open to collect data on.

[@UnclePatches]

@@aukora129 Found the dunning-kruger Riot apologist.

[@TheOrbital5]

@@UnclePatches no they're correct, this fear mongering by people that dont understand security is cringe and why companies make billions of dollars by selling you fear (like many vpn companies saying that if you dont have a vpn you'll be hacked)

[@aukora129]

@@UnclePatches being more knowledgeable than someone isn't the dunning kreuger effect.

[@aukora129]

@xPinkyDash His idea is that it can collect data while league is closed and then only send it when league is open which would reproduce the results seen in the video. It's still wrong but it does make the demonstration with wireshark kinda meaningless.

[@SuzuBelle-w4n]

I just don't feel any game or entertainment is worth forfeiting any level of control over my personal computer for. While I do miss league sometimes, avoiding the inevitable day-ruining toxicity that is common and playing awesome indie games instead has been a great time

[@Hunoa44]

Yeah,im not touching leek of legends ever again I'll just enjoy good games and laugh at those who get their PC's broken cause of vanguard And no,PC breaking,censorship(outside of topic,but is top 2 in virtual importance) and privacy invasions are inexcusable

[@matyasborecky5835]

People forget there is already ton of other kernel level anti-cheats, like easy anti-cheat is a very popular one and if you play Apex legends or DBD, you already have it installed

[@nathanielbass771]

are they owned by a chinese company? are they known for causing significant performance problems? A drop of 100 FPS on a rig that powerful is NUTS. Now imagine you're running older pcs that barely manage stable gameplay(which is a huge portion of every playerbase) and you might not even be able to run the game. By browsing through the comments, it seems that latency also causes significant issues because the "anti-cheat" disconnects from the server...

[@CantoniaCustoms]

@@nathanielbass771 iirc apex is. and fortnite is an epic exclusive and guess who runs epic?

[@nathanielbass771]

@@CantoniaCustoms people don't like epic and fortnite for this reason as well

[@shadowcraftplayer9075]

You can't detect Vanguard network traffic that RIOT decides to hidde. Thsts the whole point of being a kernel level software.

[@RegrinderAlert]

And if Vanguard really had those capabilities you could find them in the binary. Riot has no way to hide them either.

[@shadowcraftplayer9075]

​@@RegrinderAlert If it has the hability to connect to the internet, it can run dinamic code not included in the bin. And this funcionality is really really easy to hidde. Some times this funcionality is just a call to a function that could be used for whatever, like a C call to popen or a java/javascript call to eval or function that gets a string from the net. That's just one line of code and do pretty much everything you want it too. This is also known as a "dropper". Other times to make it less obvious is included as a vulnerability in the code. That way there no weird funcions or calls in the bin. Just a vulnerability in memory usage that can be used remotelly to run code on your machine. This can be adjusted to only run on X region at a custom moment in time. For example the Vanguard could visit a website or connect to a server (like league game server) and if the server detects that you are running Vanguard for example from Taiwan, then and only then send you the payload/exploit. So you can be running Vanguard in your home as a security analist, analize all network trafic from a proxy (so even if your PC is hidding it, you will see it), analize the bin, and don't find anything weird or malicious at all. But at the same moment another regular user in Taiwan is getting his Vanguard exploited to spy on his PC. I'm not saying this is what Riot/Tencent is trying or intending to do at all. I'm saying that this is feasible. And also that even if Riot is trying it's best to enforce your security and dosn't try to spy you at all, any other malicious actor can try to do it. And since this is run at a really low level, there is no normal security tool or security analisis that can protect you at all. ALSO VERY IMPORTANT: Vanguard is not 100% cheat proof. You can still cheat on League and Valorant. There is no way for Vanguard to know if you are recording your screen with a camera (or a custom monitor), sending the video in real time to another computer (also known as video streaming) from your camera and sending commands to a custom mouse/keyboard. For example an AI can study the screen and every time it detects a Karthus ulti, starts a timer and if you have any hability that can dodge it (like shaco R), just sends the R keypress to your keyboard. And Vanguard is in your PC, not in your Keyboard, your keyboard can fool your PC into thinking it is a normal keyboard, but aside from being a normal keyboard, it also can get input from an external PC. Vanguard will kill most of "average" hacks. But any streamer/pro player/booster still can afford more advanced hacks. Vanguard will only make hacks more expensive and lucrative, making the hacking excene more PRO and less Amateur. I'm sure there is already hacks that are still working in League after Vanguard. The only way to avoid cheating at all is in competitions where the players can't access the PC before the competition and when they pass a metal scanner and are isolated from other people. There is a meme in Chess from a player that supposedly used a vibrator/but plug to receive signals in a live Chess match. From what i know there is nothing in place at the moment avoiding a pro player from having some electrical device inside their socks sending them small electrical signals every time they get ganked. A team "fan" watching the match live on the studio can press a button each time the toplaner is about to get ganked. Press another when enemy team is invading a buff. Or to tell when enemies are swaping lanes. Etc. This is just an example. Remember that Sports are a bussiness, and the difference from cheating or not can be between having your job or losing it for next split, so is it to expect that some players/teams will try to cheat in some way.

[@attilatorok5767]

Yes you can, but not from the same computer. You would plug a computer 1 into the same networking interface as the computer 2 that you want to test. Now computer 1 will see all the packets being sent over that networking interface, including computer 2s. This means that you can inspect everything sent from a computer with vanguard with a computer without vanguard, so vanguard doesn't have the power to hide this from you, if you have access to the ports of your router.

[@scifino1]

Well, you can, if you have Wireshark run on another computer that is configured to connect the computer running the game to the network and the computer running the game has no other connection to the network.

[@scifino1]

@@RegrinderAlert If you had ever tried to decompile Riot's stuff, you'd know that it's obfuscated af. They could be hiding any kind of malware in that mess.

[@jakubekch.3621]

that was way more than I expected from the league news channel I wanna hear more about genshin exploit

[@dragonzxzz]

The problem is some of the hacks are run on a 2nd PC and connected to your main PC's PCIE slot which is undetectable, so kernel level anti cheat on your main PC is completely useless for these kind of hacks from what I heard.

[@opossums-will-sing]

Correct. You don't even need a second PC, an Arduino would be powerful enough.

[@Cryoptic_]

its a problem for sure, point is still to try and reduce it as much as possible tho yk. thats why things like paid games are less prone to being cheated or smurfed on, because barrier of entry is low. increase the barrier of entry by adding economical cost, increasing knowledge needed to cheat, increase skills needed to do stuff.... it all just lowers the amount of people that will still do it. realistically noone can completely stop cheating for now. same goes for real life crime. its about reducing the numbers as much as u can. thinking u can make it 0 is often a dream and tends to be unrealistic. if it adds to barrier of entry, then it is generally good so long as it doesnt make it worse for everyone else.

[@dragonzxzz]

Fair points 🤠👍

[@RegrinderAlert]

@@opossums-will-singBro is talking about DMA over PCIe, Arduino won’t help you with any of that lol

[@dedosdeceniza]

to be fair, if the cheater HAS to buy a second pc or an arduino, they already lost the battle, because they need to spend money to cheat on a fucking game. It does decrease casual cheating. Like, you have to be a pro cheater to cheat now, which is great because they can still check your game history to see if you cheat when people report you, it's not like vanguard does all the work.

[@monkeymansungoku8305]

Tencent owns a large stake in riot. I am fearful of the day they suggest a minor change in the anti cheat that now has 100% control of my pc. Additionally, anything kernel level has the ability to make calls and requests to the hardware itself which can be very, very difficult to detect. Just because it didn’t send capturable wire shark data today, tomorrow, or the next day, doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. Oops I left league running in my pc and went to the store better hope vanguard didn’t commit espionage. Or the hackers scenario too; the ransomware headline would be hilarious to read as I try to recover my data.

[@Bloodworia]

I uninstalled when they announced the change

[@mischa7823]

The biggest Problem with Vanguard is that is a third party software (read: not a part of Windows) that talks and gets commands from "outside" (read: another software at least locally, maybe even remote) and acts with the highest priviliges the system has to offer (read: above the normal administrator account) It probably can - and will - be exploited by viruses.

[@HSE331]

The biggest issue is thst Riot has been hacked way too many times for them to be some security model.

[@Salzui]

their servers and user data stayed safe, "only" some dev area got invaded so far. big difference for customers.

[@LyprosMelfdan]

@@Salzui What do you mean the user data stayed safe ??? Faker and many high elo player got ddos constatly because riot was leaking their ip in real time.

[@MisterAssasine]

@@LyprosMelfdan which is not part of a hack

[@flasssss]

the quality of the music and the whole video is awesome... Thanks for bringing this content for free

[@centhegibbon8220]

Vanguard patch began causing hdmi crashes whenever I play league, guess this is the end

[@Braxtonkai]

Don't stop bots or cheaters, failed on concept, on testing and on release

[@TheN0NameUser]

My PC runs most AAA-Games effortlessly, but ever since Vanguard it sounds more like a helicopter when playing League ...

[@vgamedude12]

Riot can say their closed source garbage does x or y until they're out of breath, the fact that it has to turn on when your pc boots and no other anti cheat does that is enough for me to not download it. And I 100 percent do not trust limited wireshark testing done here and someordinarygamers did as proof it doesn't do anything until the game is booted. If it didn't do anything until the game was booted it WOULDNT HAVE TO BOOT ON STARTUP

[@Asango]

If you had watched the video you'd know that most modern anti cheat programs do that. Also the notion that it needs to boot on startup for the express purpose of transmitting data is entirely made up.

[@raziel_ashura]

This is my final Ryscu video as i'm no longer a league player nor will i ever be again, vanguard is the last drop that made me quit after 14 years of playing. No fucking way i'm giving Riot kernel access. Fuckers can't even rework skarner without fucking the game up. Fuck kernel anticheats in general.

[@Salzui]

when you are scared because of a word

[@VinegarPotato]

Others will play more because of less cheaters

[@Shadowlet]

@Tevsu They didn't mention anything about data harvesting though.. Reading is hard.

[@Cryoptic_]

so, what are u gonna play them. exicted to see u pull up a list of games that dont use battle eye, ez anti cheat or something else. most anti cheats are kernel level, it sucks but its the new norm. get used to it. fight back if u wish. best thing u could do is go develop some sort of AI that can detect inhuman movements or choices and make an anti cheat based of that. GL lad.

[@ImaskarDono]

​@Tevsuhe's right, you're wrong. Security layers have greatly reduced the amount of viruses and hacks out there. Do not bypass them.

[@randomness4989]

The only incident i had with vangaurd was when i installed it on my old pc for valorent,constant blue screens for no reason until one day the pc just briced and would not start at all

[@realluckyboy]

Vanguard is on but no riot games. i noticed random stutters like 3 times on 8hours for like 1.5 sec. This is since vanguard.

[@Quappoles]

Ever since I installed the new vanguard update I started looking into my data transfer. Turns out Vanguard started FEEDING on my CPU and data drive. (Game wasn't running) so I'm a bit confused how you got those 0.00 numbers. I'm using Windows 10 but my pc is a little older. Also I started having heavy fps drops in many games ever wince 14.9

[@SpookSkellington]

And my friends said i was paranoid for quitting League when they forced vanguard. I might be completely insane, but this time i was right.

[@jeremymcbride]

I generally have the client open in the background, like steam. 'unexpected error' occurs and crashes the client at least once a day when I'm not actively playing league.

[@JKczolg]

Saying vaguard isnt that bad cuz it sends game stuff only when it is running is like saying, giving those people keys to my house isnt that bad, they just take a look every time i coock something. But if they wanted to do something else, whos there to stop them.

[@thalesvondasos]

good analogy 👍

[@Shaco.]

Stop using antivirus program or other game's anticheat than

[@thalesvondasos]

@@Shaco. Other anticheats like EAC don't need to run all the time

[@SlothWindGod]

​@@Shaco. Also most anti viruses exist to fix non existent problems. Macfree is shit and windows defender works for most modern people, as long as you don't download random exes programs as admin

[@Salzui]

@@thalesvondasos So you say other anticheats are not bad because they only run while you game. But if they run during the game, they could still do all the nasty things you fear vanguard doing.

[@Drayson95]

While it doesnt send/receive any packets when game is off(which I think most people dont care about anyways since who cares about spying on gamers like us that most likely dont leave their houses 90% of the time anyway) its still working in the background impacting performance of your entire system doing fuck knows what : D However what I have most problem with regarding the video is at 7:07 the analogy is COMPLETELY WRONG, while yes devs vs cheat developers is a dynamic arms race effectiveness of anti cheat has nothing to do with how much access it has to the system and vast majority of cheats dont have kernel level access either. The only valid reason I can think of for Vanguard to have that level of access to your system is to collect hardware ids to prevent once caught people from cheating again but even that can be easily bypassed and is not necessary to detect serial offenders.

[@LoathsomePopoEater]

I mean call me crazy, but before vanguard I swear League of Legends was the game I had the least amount of cheaters. Through my lifetime of playing league I think I identified 1 player who was scripting. Besides that nada just the "normal" LoL experience. So whatever they were doing without vanguard seemed to have been working fine and I dont like using vanguard its too inconvenient to have it up just so I can play 1 muthaeffing game. Like if it launched and closed with the game I would be more okay with it but I ain't opening vanguard 24/7 on my pc incase I wanted to scratch my league itch Or have to restart my pc just cuz I closed it after I thought I was done playing league...

[@Mynth16]

The reason is because most cheaters are Masters+ who use it subtly, not blatantly cheating

[@breakpoint1875]

@@Mynth16 True but they are releasing an update that inconveniences 99.9% of the population while helping the 0.1%. Why not make vanguard mandatory only for Masters+ then?

[@Delimon007]

What rank are you? I play in the higher ranks and I have seen cheaters left and right. The higher rank you play in the more likely you will find cheaters in League.

[@dissidius13]

​@@Delimon007even now with Vanguard, this game is still full of cheaters. stop di*kriding the ccp company. Vanguard is spyware. Nothing more, nothing less.

[@quanghieulee238]

They need to crack down on bot farm.

[@joelramp]

As long you use Facebook, TikTok, etc., you shouldn't mind about Vanguard. They can do much more than Vanguard ever can. You just don't know it...

[@ImaskarDono]

The last, most important part is omitted. Even if Vanguard doesn't immediately send your data to CCP, it doesn't mean it won't in the future.

[@dedosdeceniza]

if it did, they would have to update their terms of service to allow vanguard to get data outside of league. Because for them to actually "steal" your data, they have to specify what data they are harvesting from your computer, so it isn't actually "stealing" it's "harvesting and selling". It's still bad, but at least we know WHEN to be wary of Vanguard. Until then, even if they sent the CCP anything, it's going to be league match data which im guessing they don't really need.

[@SoDamnMetal]

The amount of people that don't understand they effectively have a sleeper agent on their pc that can be woken up at any time is infuriating, but honestly not surprising.

[@CJManning86]

Makes me sad that no one has actually gotten to the bottom of this or described it more than just a surface level "what's happening" approach. It's very invasive and it's a Chinese company... on top of which is controlled by their government when they want something out of them. It doesn't transmit until gameplay, but what is it transmitting? Do we know for sure? Wireshark is a great tool that we use where I work, I use it. Looking deeper into actual packet inspection is more important than just seeing it send stuff to IPs.

[@mister_needles]

This guy really said "I have a program to see what information is being sent by Vanguard. Now, Vanguard only sends info while the game is running, and im not going to investigate further. Other games. Cheaters. Grrrrr." BRUHHHHHHH WHAT WAS THE POINT HERE???

[@narpwa]

that it doesn't send data trough your local network or internet and this is a good point

[@feranks3211]

this video is really really well made. not only the info (thanks for that) but also the art direction. I don't know how else to put it

[@XvSuPreMzvX]

1: League had no cheat issues before Vanguard. Some scripters but its fairly rare to encounter one. 2: For some poeple like myself, changing settings in the BIOS to enable TPM 2.0 is a NO NO for personal reasons and also because that should not be a thing to be able to play video game.(Terrible marketing decision) 3: Vanguard, Riot all from Tencent chineese company, anyone that know about the world and electronics in general know that is a way to much intrusive program for the Western world. 4: Riot have said they have no intentions to fix or revert this anti-cheat shit program so for everyone like me after 11 years of league that is just pure disgrace for this company. 5: Yes Vanguard is a strong anti-cheat but cheat in the first place always have advance over anti-cheat programs so will this shit program solve anything in long term? i highly doubt about that.

[@rpscorp9457]

Its already been bypassed...just costs a little more.

[@ToTheGrave20]

It does infact send packets even when not in game....

[@narpwa]

how do you know ? you tested it ?

[@ivanconte9665]

When I don't play League and try to exit from Vanguard I get bluescreen. Like 6/10 times.

[@evanderchan8475]

Somehow after saying china#1 i get mythic items from hextech chest