During the last days Valorant, the new game from Riot Games, has caught the attention of many users for two reasons. The first, because the game is becoming quite popular and many users want to access its beta. The second, for anti-cheat system It is used to detect cheaters.
What are anti-cheat systems
The cheat in video games they are tricks or traps that some players do to take advantage of the games. For this reason, the one who uses these types of prohibited abilities are normally known as cheetos (cheating players).
There are different types of cheats. For example, there are Mods, which are modifications that on some occasions only modify the appearance and that is not serious, but on other occasions they are capable of adding new abilities for the player. There are also the Aimbot that in shooter-type games can give you an advantage through shooting assistance. These are some examples, but there are more and they would give advantages in competitive situations where every second and movement counts.
Well, to avoid these bad practices there are anti-cheat systems. A solution that is nothing recent or novel, it has been used for many years. For example, in 2002 Valve included its Valve Anti-Cheat on its Steam video game platform. But they were not the only ones, many other video game developers did the same to prevent anyone from gaining advantages in games illegally.
The last to arrive was Riot Vanguard, a feature that Riot Games has already included in Valorant and that it intends to bring to other company games as well. The problem? The privilege level.
The Valorant and vgk.sys controversy
Riot Vanguard It is the name of the new anti-cheat system that Riot Games has included in Valorant. A solution that could not be anything different from those that many games already integrate and that, perhaps, you did not know. The problem is that, according to some users, the level of access and how it is executed is excessive.
Without going into too technical and complete terms, Windows is organized in a kind of rings with different privileges. It starts at Ring 0, where the Kernel is and there you have all possible access privileges. And then there are Ring 1, Ring 2 and Ring 3 where the applications that run on them are more limited depending on what type of actions they want to perform or consult data.
Riot Vanguard, whose name of the file installed in Windows is vgk.sys, runs within Ring 0 and does so from the start of the computer and not just the game. With two components, on the one hand there is the controller that has all those privileges and on the other the detection system that is the one that does not check anything until Valorant is executed according to Riot.
Riot has explained which the reason for doing this is to avoid more sophisticated traps and advanced that are executed before even starting the game or loading the entire operating system itself. That is why it is important and necessary, according to them, that the operation of their system be as it is.
https://twitter.com/riotgames/status/1251240658448179200?s=20
In addition, without going into details to avoid possible hacks that do compromise the system and user, ensure that they will not collect personal information of the user. What's more, the company's bounty program has raised the payment for possible vulnerabilities that are found in this feature to demonstrate their commitment.
In any case, the explanations are not enough and there are those who think that there are many risks for few benefits. And it is that a vulnerability in the system would allow an attacker access with greater privileges. So if you distrust Riot for whatever reason or want maximum security you should not install their new game and possibly remove others if they add it.
However, if you want to play Valorant as well as other current games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone, etc., you will have to accept and trust these systems that seek to guarantee that we all play with the same conditions. In addition to the speed when reacting to possible security problems. Because if you uninstall these games directly they will not run.