VALORANT Anti-Cheat Driver Explained

A post from Riot on Reddit chimes in on a discussion of anti-cheat measures in VALORANT, their new first-person shooter (thanks DSOGaming). This explains why they are loading a driver at boot and what it does and does not do. Here's word:
TL;DR Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime.

Vanguard contains a driver component called vgk.sys (similar to other anti-cheat systems), it's the reason why a reboot is required after installing. Vanguard doesn't consider the computer trusted unless the Vanguard driver is loaded at system startup (this part is less common for anti-cheat systems).

This is good for stopping cheaters because a common way to bypass anti-cheat systems is to load cheats before the anti-cheat system starts and either modify system components to contain the cheat or to have the cheat tamper with the anti-cheat system as it loads. Running the driver at system startup time makes this significantly more difficult.

We've tried to be very careful with the security of the driver. We've had multiple external security research teams review it for flaws (we don't want to accidentally decrease the security of the computer like other anti-cheat drivers have done in the past). We're also following a least-privilege approach to the driver where the driver component does as little as possible preferring to let the non-driver component do the majority of work (also the non-driver component doesn't run unless the game is running).

The Vanguard driver does not collect or send any information about your computer back to us. Any cheat detection scans will be run by the non-driver component only when the game is running.

The Vanguard driver can be uninstalled at any time (it'll be "Riot Vanguard" in Add/Remove programs) and the driver component does not collect any information from your computer or communicate over the network at all.

We think this is an important tool in our fight against cheaters but the important part is that we're here so that players can have a good experience with Valorant and if our security tools do more harm than good we will remove them (and try something else). For now we think a run-at-boot time driver is the right choice.
View : : :
38.
 
Re: VALORANT Anti-Cheat Driver Explained
Apr 14, 2020, 06:54
38.
Re: VALORANT Anti-Cheat Driver Explained Apr 14, 2020, 06:54
Apr 14, 2020, 06:54
 
Drayth wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 02:01:
Muscular Beaver wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 00:30:
jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:24:
Rhett wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:42:
phinn wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 16:26:
TL;DR Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime.


This doesn't sound at all obtrusive enough to combat all the cheating going on in PC. Windows 10 needs a completely locked down Gaming Mode added by Microsoft and coordinated with gaming companies across the world.

Coming soon! Xbox Live Gold for PC Gaming Plus Beta! Don't like cheaters? Pay us money and only play with other suckers!

I do agree cheaters are getting out of hand in games over the last several years though. Really annoying. Bad enough to warrant region locking in pretty much anything competitive, but I'm not sure what games actually do that.
How would region locking help with cheating? Are there nationalities out there that don't cheat at all?
Ever played on European servers that are paired with Russians?
Obviously not.

Yeah, there are certain populations that have a very dense cheat-to-player ratio. It's a very round about way of calling something an anti-cheat technique, but the results are certainly measurable.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but certainly someone has quantified that. Gotta link? Otherwise it just sounds like "other-ism."
If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Slava Ukraini!
Avatar 22024
Date
Subject
Author
2.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
5.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
13.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
15.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
22.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
43.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
46.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
16.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
20.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
25.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
10.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
14.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
23.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
49.
Apr 15, 2020Apr 15 2020
26.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
41.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
11.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
12.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
18.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
21.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
35.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
36.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
 38.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
     Re: VALORANT Anti-Cheat Driver Explained
29.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
17.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
19.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
24.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
27.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
28.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
30.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
31.
Apr 13, 2020Apr 13 2020
39.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
42.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
44.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
45.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
47.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
48.
Apr 15, 2020Apr 15 2020
34.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
40.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020
37.
Apr 14, 2020Apr 14 2020