Valorant

[Indrick Boreale]

Name one.

I named two right after the sentence from which you quoted me, but you seem to have omitted those from your quote.

You consented to have malware-like devices blocked when you activated IOMMU in your BIOS. Turn it off if you don't want that to happen. You consented to allow Riot to notify your OS that malware-like devices are attacking the system by accepting the EULA in Valorant. Uninstall Valorant if you don't want your OS notified that your $6000 Valorcheat card is sitting in the PCIe slot.

Or Riot Games can ban my IP if it can detect I'm using malware-like devices, which is an acceptable method of preventing cheating - and reversible in case of false positives - and not touch anything that may compromise my hardware without my consent.

They argue the same way, not understanding what was affected or how, and lack any empathy or higher-level thinking.

We were explained more than once what was affected and how. It is absolutely irrelevant. Ultimately, it is not a technical problem. It simply boils down to this:

This is an anti-consumer practice. It needs to stop.

 

[klab]

I named two right after the sentence from which you quoted me, but you seem to have omitted those from your quote.

Or Riot Games can ban my IP if it can detect I'm using malware-like devices, which is an acceptable method of preventing cheating - and reversible in case of false positives - and not touch anything that may compromise my hardware without my consent.

We were explained more than once what was affected and how. It is absolutely irrelevant. Ultimately, it is not a technical problem. It simply boils down to this:

>anti-consumer
>the vast majority of consumers love it
???
Even the cheat forum users are calling your position retarded.
>it needs to stop
Make the people stop playing, then.
Is it time to call the consumers retarded?

acceptable method of preventing cheating

Acceptable to whom? The entire college dorm receiving a ban because 1 dude decided to cheat?
>you shouldn't be able to ban cheaters with shared IPs

 

[Pargon]

From someone that lived through the borderlands updates and the forced monetization of literally every videogame ever: fuck all of them and fuck all of you for continually giving these scumbags money. stop giving them money. i get you like your games but goddamn.

This is the most frustrating part for me. I read some of the responses and keep wondering why so many seem to love the leash

 

[Indrick Boreale]

>anti-consumer
>the vast majority of consumers love it
???

Hard drugs are illegal, plenty of people love them.

Even the cheat forum users are calling your position retarded.

They're being smug about how to bypass the issue, they are saying nothing about the position I am espousing.

>it needs to stop
Make the people stop playing, then.
Is it time to call the consumers retarded?

Millions of flies eat shit. Doesn't mean it's any good for them.

Acceptable to whom? The entire college dorm receiving a ban because 1 dude decided to cheat?
>you shouldn't be able to ban cheaters with shared IPs

That's one possibility to account for in reversing a ban. Bans are reversible. Rootkits are an entirely different matter.

 

[FunPosting101]

This is whole thing is the sort of fight where I wish both sides could lose. Fuck the cheaters, fuck riot and fuck the jeets and the chicoms too, because I bet they're involved in this in some way.

 

[klab]

This is the most frustrating part for me. I read some of the responses and keep wondering why so many seem to love the leash

What do you think the leash is? At what point, when you entered the thread titled "Valorant," did you think it could be about something you disliked?

They're being smug about how to bypass the issue, they are saying nothing about the position I am espousing.

Your position is equally applied to any software run with administrator access - it just shouldn't exist in your eyes.

That's one possibility to account for in reversing a ban. Bans are reversible. Rootkits are an entirely different matter.

Rootkits are reversible.
Edit: It bothers me that you're calling Vanguard a rootkit when it.
1. Doesn't hide where it is or what it does
2. Doesn't persist after uninstall
3. Can be exited out of without compromising the stability of the system
4. Won't run in Safe Mode
The only similarities it has to a rootkit are its privileged access and the protection ring it operates at.
Vanguard has significant potential for malicious behavior, as does any software you install on your computer. As someone else already said, software doesn't need Ring 0 access to ruin your shit. Just look at actual malware using Excel macros or PDF exploits.
The thing is, you installed it and chose to keep it. People have to be capable of accepting responsibility and making informed decisions, or what you're asking for is a totally managed economy, anyway.

 

[Pargon]

What do you think the leash is?

“People are retarded so if we glue these money funnels onto our currently-successful product we can boil the frog and wait while all of our competitors do the same” The post I responded to referenced past shitty practices in game sales and distribution that are now woefully standard

If you think every single large developer is not watching this situation to see how much their market share is willing to tolerate this, you are extremely stupid

 

[Indrick Boreale]

Your position is equally applied to any software run with administrator access - it just shouldn't exist in your eyes.

Pardon me for thinking a videogame has no business being run with administrator access.

Edit: It bothers me that you're calling Vanguard a rootkit when it.
1. Doesn't hide where it is or what it does

It compromises hardware. Shitty-ass hardware that shitty people use for shitty means, sure, but compromise it it does.

2. Doesn't persist after uninstall

If it corrupts the firmware of the hardware, the hardware must be reflashed. Therefore, it does persist after uninstall.

3. Can be exited out of without compromising the stability of the system

The stability of the firmware it messed with was compromised.

4. Won't run in Safe Mode

Doesn't matter if the device it attacked cannot be used without reflashing.

The thing is, you installed it and chose to keep it. People have to be capable of accepting responsibility and making informed decisions, or what you're asking for is a totally managed economy, anyway.

This was a Valorant update. It did not come originally, and people did not find out until the person tweeted about it with the "6k paperweight" snark. It's safe to say that people never consented to this, and would not have consented to it had they known beforehand.

I fail to see how anti-consumer practices have anything to do with managed economy.

 

[Ralph’s Shack]

https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/...vgk-update-locked-dma-firmware-sata-nvme.html
It's better to have the entire thread anyway.
View attachment 9048874
But yeah, the thread proves that the software/hardware isn't broken. The DMA just can't find a valid device anymore.

https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/...ts-vanguard-update-bricking-cheaters-pcs.html
View attachment 9048884View attachment 9048886
The cheaters in this forum display a higher level of intelligence than the average poster in this thread.

Spoiler: Bonus

View attachment 9048907

It was hard to navigate that ad riddled site beg my pardon SIRE

 

[klab]

“People are retarded so if we glue these money funnels onto our currently-successful product we can boil the frog and wait while all of our competitors do the same” The post I responded to referenced past shitty practices in game sales and distribution that are now woefully standard

If you think every single large developer is not watching this situation to see how much their market share is willing to tolerate this, you are extremely stupid

I think I agree with a good amount of what you're saying. Back when Lost Ark released, I thought it was a psyop to get people on board with Digital ID because of how bad the cheating was then and how long it took AWS to do something about it.
However, I believe the ignorance surrounding what Vanguard actually did is doing more damage to your cause than their leveraging of OS flags to enforce IOMMU policy properly. Of all the hills to die on, this one isn't worth it imo.

Pardon me for thinking a videogame has no business being run with administrator access.

A videogame doesn't. Anti-cheat software does. And some video games are weird and ask for administrator access. Plus, you do it every time you install to Program Files instead of your user folder.

It compromises hardware. Shitty-ass hardware that shitty people use for shitty means, sure, but compromise it it does.

"The hardware" isn't compromised. It's fully functional and can detect that there are no valid devices because it can no longer access the memory it shouldn't access.

If it corrupts the firmware of the hardware, the hardware must be reflashed. Therefore, it does persist after uninstall.

"The firmware" isn't corrupted. Vanguard doesn't persist after uninstall.

The stability of the firmware it messed with was compromised.

Accessing protected memory typically causes a segfault. You can try it yourself.

Doesn't matter if the device it attacked cannot be used without reflashing.

There was no attack.

This was a Valorant update. It did not came originally, and people did not find out until the person tweeted about it with the "6k paperweight" snark. It's safe to say that people never consented to this, and would not have consented to it had they known beforehand.

The people absolutely consented. Not only does installing software and being presented with license agreements make you more aware of its capabilities, but also being naturally exposed to the argumentation around the software does.

I fail to see how anti-consumer practices have anything to do with managed economy.

You're asking for people to be rendered incapable of making decisions they may regret later.

It was hard to navigate that ad riddled site beg my pardon SIRE

My bad. I didn't look at it without ad blocking. But also, where's your ad block?

 

[blast5389]

So basically, the only way to play in a cheater free enviornment is to play on a console without jailbreaks and without crossplay. Even then there's still those controller mods. It's all jewish gambling dopamine hijacking bullshit designed to steal as much of your time and money away as humanly possible anyway

This is hardly the most "anti-consumer" thing they do, they are already trying to fuck you as hard as you'll take it. Yes, it is time to call the consumers retarded because they are. They are the reason we have 99.99$ half finished games that don't even connect to other players properly. Don't forget to tip and gamble for the newest skin btw

 

[Data Dynamo 658]

why would the internet hate the e date simulator and discord groomer game?

riot has always been gay

league of legends for the longest time has the most toxic community of all time

non gamers know to dodge psychos who play this

Riot release shit 5 v 5 shooter and expect different results

Vangaurd anti cheat have not touched and never will have access to my pc , kernal anti cheat in 2026 that does nothing to smurfs or people griefing that lol had decades before and spam new accounts

 

[Pargon]

Yes, it is time to call the consumers retarded because they are.

This is more or less what I was getting at. And that’s discounting the fact that they’re the first hurdle these assholes have to jump to make it commonplace. And we’re the second. Lots of folks in this thread saying pffft, it’s Valorant and it sucks, or it’s Riot and they suck, so fuck it, right?

Sure, until it gets enough of a foothold that it’s attached to your pet IP. Or something that shitty company practices aside looks, or even is, fun to play. And that’s the ballgame, because it takes maybe two big-selling titles with something like this to convince all the decision-makers that this is now the industry direction, and it’s time to get onboard lest the shareholders get restless.

 

[The Ugly One]

Doesn't matter if it breaks the hardware or the software.

Neither software nor hardware were broken. All the software and hardware involved functioned correctly - they correctly identified a malicious piece of hardware, and the part of the motherboard responsible for isolating it correctly isolated it.

Barely anyone in this thread agrees with you

Everyone who understands what actually happened pretty broadly agrees with me. We're all on the same page - devices that spoof NVMe drives to gain ring 0 access to infect running programs with foreign code should be blocked by the operating system. Everyone who disagrees with me is the kind of person who thinks TPM is a phone-home device and that Trusted Execution is just a conspiracy to stop you from using Linux. You can gather another fifty or even a hundred retards who, like you, don't understand any of the technology involved, and who cares? It's not a democracy. If you disagree with me and can't get basic facts right - like how the cheat device worked and how it was stopped, or you think aarch64 has ring 0, or you think firmware was corrupted, or you think PCs were bricked - your opinion doesn't matter. You don't even have a sophomore-level understanding of the technology involved.

You've shown you can't understand this sentence:

"A device used unsigned firmware to spoof an NVMe drive, gain kernel-level privileges, access an unauthorized memory, and inject malware into a running program, which a third-party program detected, alerted the operating system's malware defenses, which then identified the device using the unsigned driver and blocked it at the IOMMU,"

Go back and read @22 Rimfire's excellent post. He's much less of a belligerent asshole than me. Maybe it will get through to you.

Post in thread 'Valorant'

Yesterday at 2:22 PM

What kind of low level device intrusion is being used to cheat in video games? A lag switch? Only works when the devs are retarded enough to use P2P for multiplayer. Key injection? Macros are already available.

A custom PCIe device that spoofs an NVMe drive to inject code into the game. Did you not read the thread, like, at all?

Modern cheating methods are absurdly sophisticated, and there's a big industry making a shit ton of money from it.

The stack looks like this:

1. A DMA card (typically some flavor of FGPA) in the gaming PC. This card imitates an innocuous piece...

• 22 Rimfire

Reactions: x 14 x 1

And reminder, you still have full control. You can install an operating system that allows you disable all the security you want, Linux. You can go into the BIOS and disable the IOMMU. Congratulations. Now all the things you're mad about can't be done. Go get your DMA card and cheat at Tarkov to your heart's content. Nobody put a gun to your head and said you have to play Valorant.

 

[klab]

Spoiler: Data Dynamo 658

why would the internet hate the e date simulator and discord groomer game?

riot has always been gay

league of legends for the longest time has the most toxic community of all time

non gamers know to dodge psychos who play this

Riot release shit 5 v 5 shooter and expect different results

Vangaurd anti cheat have not touched and never will have access to my pc , kernal anti cheat in 2026 that does nothing to smurfs or people griefing that lol had decades before and spam new accounts

Funny, you mention that last part, because Riot (supposedly) has been doing something about it. Nowadays, they "connect" accounts they believe are operated by the same person, and when one account is punished, they all are. There may be some privacy implications, but it's using information they already collect.

This is more or less what I was getting at. And that’s discounting the fact that they’re the first hurdle these assholes have to jump to make it commonplace. And we’re the second. Lots of folks in this thread saying pffft, it’s Valorant and it sucks, or it’s Riot and they suck, so fuck it, right?

Sure, until it gets enough of a foothold that it’s attached to your pet IP. Or something that shitty company practices aside looks, or even is, fun to play. And that’s the ballgame, because it takes maybe two big-selling titles with something like this to convince all the decision-makers that this is now the industry direction, and it’s time to get onboard lest the shareholders get restless.

Plenty of games survive with weaker anti-cheat measures. It's just one method, one strategy. I'm mostly bothered by the Zoomers in the Twitter post and this thread who confused the DMA device with a GPU and blamed Riot for using the word "paperweight".
You can commiserate all you wish about a future where people are so fed up with cheaters that they give up their human rights. You can do that until you're blue in the head. Valorant is just a retarded game for retarded zoomers and trannies and groomers. Some people might leave Tarkov for Valorant because of its superior anti-cheat, but nothing discussed here will have any profound consequences.

Spoiler: wooting

It wasn't covered in KF, afaik, but using certain keyboard features in Counter-Strike can get you kicked.

Both of these allow for inputs that aren't feasible for humans. Both are configured via software but handled entirely by my keyboard's hardware and firmware, so I don't need the software open. They could get me kicked from a CS match for input automation, but not in Overwatch, despite providing a similar benefit. If I purchased this keyboard with the express purpose of using it to my advantage in Counter-Strike, would I be entitled to a refund from Wooting or a lawsuit against Valve because I can't use my hardware the way I want?

 

[TriariiStrategos]

I miss the days of self hosted servers with human admins

back when you could freely mod your games and play without internet on LAN

Spoiler

god bless the Russian that added the song and the bots mod to the game

 

[Pargon]

reading this thread has for the first time made me desperate for all the engineers in the room to please fucking attempt to understand the business and financial angle rather than the other way around so I’m going to kill myself now

 

[Smithfield Ham]

Can someone give me a QRD on why people seem to be actually defending this shit? I'm not climbing these textwalls.

 

[False and Misleading]

reading this thread has for the first time made me desperate for all the engineers in the room to please fucking attempt to understand the business and financial angle rather than the other way around so I’m going to kill myself now

won't someone please think of the profits?

But even then, when this anti-cheat gets compromised, and it will, it's going to cause a PR issue when Lil Timmy's PC gets bricked because the malicious actor blacklisted his real NVMe drive for shiggles/ransom. Even from a business perspective, it is shortsighted.

 

[klab]

Can someone give me a QRD on why people seem to be actually defending this shit? I'm not climbing these textwalls.

Vanguard set IOMMU flags in Windows to prevent PCIE devices from accessing memory they shouldn't be allowed to access.
Riot Games made snarky Twitter posts about it, calling $6,000 devices designed for this purpose "paperweights" as a result.
Reinstalling Windows fixes this, and there are likely ways to undo the changes Vanguard makes without reinstalling Windows.
It's all smoke from the same fire that's been burning since Vanguard's release.

But even then, when this anti-cheat gets compromised, and it will, it's going to cause a PR issue when Lil Timmy's PC gets bricked because the malicious actor blacklisted his real NVMe drive for shiggles/ransom. Even from a business perspective, it is shortsighted.

This statement could've been made the moment Vanguard came out. Nothing about what they did now makes it any more a possibility. You always take a risk when installing other people's software. You don't even need software with Ring 0 access to ruin your life.