Valorant - A free FPS from RIOT Games

jb

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Yep, that's what happens when cheats also run in ring 0

See also: easy anti cheat, battleye. You're touting "RING 0" and "KERNEL ACCESS" as if this hasn't been done for literal years already

Anti cheats need to be enigmatic for the purpose of making it harder for cheat makers to bypass it, so we can only go by the brief summary of what the company says it does, and anything we can find from external observation (wireshark and etc)

Most anti cheats have issues with VMs since cheats can then just run in the host machine to make it impossible to detect other than using less holistic detection techniques like basic memory scanning/integrity checking and stuff

The same thing happened when random idiots that don't understand how apps work were complaining about the epic games store launcher and how it was spyware. They just latch onto a small and very oversimplified idea (in this case it's "it has K E R N E L L E V E L A C C E S S it will steal your data because of china!!") without understanding why it's needed. I don't agree that it should, but it's needed to be effective whatsoever.

There isn't that much more data to siphon from your computer if an app has root privileges, since the data you'd likely want private is stored in regular userland. In other words, accessible by any regular app anyway. The main concern with root privileges is being able to modify core system stuff to render your OS useless, so it's more concerning with actual malware that wants to destroy your pc than an anti cheat.

Apparently valorant's anti cheat is piss easy to bypass atm, but it's speculated that they're just collecting usage data and waiting until launch to fully enable it (could be bullshit but idk)

Where's the big bold disclaimer for any of these games, their anti cheats do the same thing?

https://www.easy.ac/en-us/partners/#games-list
https://www.battleye.com/#logos

Manual review takes too long and is frustrating for the players since they have to take mmr hits and sit through an entire half hour game with a guaranteed loss waiting at the end. There will simply be too much gameplay to look through - you literally cannot hire enough people to review the millions of games that are going to be played in valorant, so you'll have to leverage the players themselves to look through games like csgo's overwatch. Except hold on a sec, you can't really trust players that much so you have to limit who is allowed to look through cases. There goes like half the effectiveness. Then you can't even really be sure that people aren't just bullshitting anyway, so you need to have multiple people look through the same cases to make a judgement. Even after all that, you need to have some leniency because maybe it's just someone who's really good and looks like they're cheating but aren't

It's a good idea but the logistics make it much less effective - this is why you can still cheat a good handful of games within a certain time period in csgo without being punished (UNLESS the anti cheat picks it up)
yeah but I don't run games w/ EAC or BE on my main machine either
the reason a lot of people are upset THIS time is because vanguard runs in the background 24/7, not necessarily just because it has root access. the only people saying anything purely about vanguard's kernel driver are either ill-informed or strawmanning legitimate concerns with the security risks that come with popular, proprietary ring-0 software running whenever the computer is on. i personally do not have faith in RIOT's ability to prevent exploits in their own product, no matter how much they insist that vanguard was audited by (unnamed) comp sec companies
 

SpaceInvader

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yeah you make some good points and I didn’t realise this was a common thing with games. But it does sort of lead into the wider issue of if video games are gonna go the same route of mass data collection as social media companies did, especially since we’ve sort of just accepted it as normal now.
The sad thing is. Globals on CSGO can't play matchmaking because the anti cheat is not good enough to fight these ring 0 cheats. Which is why you have spinbotters who don't get banned only if they get overwatched in CS. While in VALORANT most of these things will be detected later on.
 

`impulse

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yeah you make some good points and I didn’t realise this was a common thing with games. But it does sort of lead into the wider issue of if video games are gonna go the same route of mass data collection as social media companies did, especially since we’ve sort of just accepted it as normal now.
I agree, it's fucked that we need to let companies have unrestricted access to our pc's to play their games but I'd rather a company we can (hopefully) hold accountable than the cheat makers themselves if there are any big mishaps

The most we can do is verify that the data leaving our pc's is what they say it is by using external monitoring tools
yeah but I don't run games w/ EAC or BE on my main machine either
the reason a lot of people are upset THIS time is because vanguard runs in the background 24/7, not necessarily just because it has root access. the only people saying anything purely about vanguard's kernel driver are either ill-informed or strawmanning legitimate concerns with the security risks that come with popular, proprietary ring-0 software running whenever the computer is on. i personally do not have faith in RIOT's ability to prevent exploits in their own product, no matter how much they insist that vanguard was audited by (unnamed) comp sec companies
Right then don't install valorant. The whole point of external independent audits is so you don't need to trust riot's ability to prevent exploits, since people who are much more qualified can verify existence and subsequent fixes. Audit results for closed source apps aren't usually published for obvious security reasons
[doublepost=1587161367][/doublepost]Until windows starts getting its shit together and provides proper sandboxing like macos is starting to do with their deprecation of kernel extensions (which is never going to happen because of their reliance on keeping backwards compat) it's going to be a constant cat and mouse game
 

SpaceInvader

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u gotta get that checked out wtf
It's something I can't fix. It's a thing that happens to me when I am in clutch situations and I see openning that I can capitalize on and I get scared of the oppertunity to win the round. My heart starts beating and my hands start shaking. It's something that even CSGO pro's have.

 
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Yurivw

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i wouldn't mind it if they provided some proof riot weren't sending data they didn't need (eg: what you browse on the internet) to tencent and other chinese companies

also the fact you're not able to use it on a virtual machine is really sus imho, at least then ppl who are really worried about that sorta thing have the reassurance that the only thing tencent knows about them is that they play valorant
Better start playing and sending your data to China that way your social credit score will be higher when they inevitably take over the world.
 

mårten

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It's something I can't fix. It's a thing that happens to me when I am in clutch situations and I see openning that I can capitalize on and I get scared of the oppertunity to win the round. My heart starts beating and my hands start shaking. It's something that even CSGO pro's have.


yeah i guess s1mple would be the best example
he always does his little shake after each shot
also it's more noticable on high-sens players as every little motion you make is transferred more clearly
you don't for example see NiKo shake like that
 

Señor Jaggles

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The issue people has had with the anti-cheat is not that it works at kernel level but the fact that it runs on system startup, not just when the game is running. That's what I've heard. I don't care much about the game, just wanted to clarify that bit.

For those who didn't understand it: The anti-cheat is running the moment you start your PC and only stops when it shuts down.

Still, shouldn't be too big of an issue, however, it is a big backdoor, just like any other kernel-level service. Whether it's dangerous or not will depend on how well and frequently Riot updates their anti-cheat. I suppose they have that covered already though, otherwise, their daring move would make them lose millions if not billions through infected PCs.
 

metropaun

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got my valorant key today and played like 5 games.

its fun. I didn't expect to have that much to be honest. I only died once to an ultimate, the other times i was always outplayed by a guy who had better aim than me. Not once did i feel like "oh wow his abilities gave him the upper hand".

apart from the fucking rocket launcher women that looks like a fortnite skin fuck her
 
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`impulse

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got my valorant key today and played like 5 games.

its fun. I didn't expect to have that much to be honest. I only died once to an ultimate, the other times i was always outplayed by a guy who had better aim than me. Not once did i feel like "oh wow his abilities gave him the upper hand".

apart from the fucking rocket launcher women that looks like a fortnite skin fuck her
don't forget her nades do more damage in total than her ult ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Mic15000

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I got in the beta, guess I'll try it out as well :D
 

ShaxxHD

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Main problem with Valorant is because of this damn anti cheat system it doesn't work on Linux. Just another one to throw on the pile I guess.