Punish the game cheater by causing the machine to crash. 🚨

Many people who have played games from Riot Games should be familiar with the anti-Cheat system of the camp like Vanguard. This system is specifically designed to prevent the use of cheat programs in games like VALORANT and League of Legends. The key highlight is that it can run deep at the Kernel level or the same level as the core of the operating system to detect cheating more effectively than normal anti-Cheat systems.

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Despite how rigorous and secure Vanguard was designed to be, the developer of the cheat program is still trying to find vulnerabilities and develop ways to avoid them, especially DMA (Direct Memory Access) cheating, which uses external hardware devices to read data directly into memory, allowing it to evade the detection of software-level Anti-Cheat systems quite well, and has become a major problem in many competitive games over the past.

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Most recently, the issue has heated up again after several users on X (Twitter) posted claims that a new updated version of Vanguard began to deal more heavily with DMA cheating devices, especially those used via SATA or NVMe.

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An account called "@ ogisadaDMA," an account talking about the DMA Cheat industry, posted a message stating that the latest version of Vanguard can "block" the Firmware of many DMA devices through the IOMMU (Input-Output Memory Management Unit) system, claiming that after in-game notifications, the device will not be available again even after Vanguard is withdrawn or the game is closed, and the solution is only to install a new operating system.

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And if, as the post claims, the solution is only to install a new operating system, it means that the affected drive may no longer have normal access to the original data, or in other words, without a backup, the job file, image, or key data on the drive may become unopened by

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There are also claims that such systems may damage or temporarily disuse Firmware of certain devices, causing heavy criticism in the gaming community, especially on legal and ethical issues, about how much Anti-Cheat should have the right to "counter" the user's hardware, even if it is a game cheating device.

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On the other hand, quite a few players see it as "worthy" for those who use cheat programs, because over the years, the problem of hackers and players using DMA Cheat has made a heavy impact on online competitive games, especially FPS games that rely on accuracy and competitive justice.

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As of now, however, there is no technical evidence or official confirmation from Riot Games that Vanguard can actually "destroy" a player's SSD, HDD, or Firmware; as well as no information yet confirming that the system affects a typical player's machine that does not use a cheat device in any way.

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Even now, Riot Games has not officially made that point clear, but this drama has made Vanguard's name controversial again, specifically on the "scope" of the Anti-Cheat system, about how much access or control users' hardware should have.

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Vanguard has been criticized many times for privacy and security issues because the system can run deep at the Kernel level and start running from power-up, causing some players to see it as having too much power to access the system and to question whether in the future this system may affect users' data or hardware, despite Riot's insistence that the system is designed to prevent game cheating only.

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Although the "Vanguard broke down the SSD / HDD" story, there is no clear evidence at this time, the incident reflects that the war between Anti-Cheat developers and rogue creators is moving more and more from the software level to the hardware level, and may become an increasingly talked about issue of law, security and user rights in the future.

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Source: X @ ogisadaDMA, @ Pirat _ Nation, @ Riot Games, VALORANT Support, The Verge, PC Gamer

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