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Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

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Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#11

Post by niam »

I never really got the outrage. Or rather, I don't understand why it's directed at the principle of a ring-0 anticheat.

I feel that security minded folks are apt to avoid installing software from notably untrusted vendors on important machines. If Riot ends up malicious then I'm not sure that kernel level access is capable of _that_ much more damage than what's required for a 'regular' anticheat to function. My bank account is unsafe either way. Obviously less access is better, but it feels like discussion around Vanguard always distills into an argument that would also suggest Riot's software to be untrustworthy even without a ring-0 anticheat.

Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#13

Post by kebokyo »

niam wrote: post #11

I never really got the outrage. Or rather, I don't understand why it's directed at the principle of a ring-0 anticheat. I feel that security minded folks are apt to avoid installing software from notably untrusted vendors on important machines. If Riot ends up malicious then I'm not sure that kernel level access is capable of _that_ much more damage than what's required for a 'regular' anticheat to function. My bank…

They want to have their cake and eat it too. If you don’t want Tencent software to potentially one day turn your computer into a zombie that DDOS’s the pentagon or something… why are you still putting League on your computer? They’re running it down mid in more ways than one.

Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#14

Post by pixl97 »

delfinom wrote: post #10
S0y wrote: post #5

None clickbait title: Riot Games will rollout their vanguard anti-cheat to league of legends. for those not in the loop, Vanguard is the anti-cheat Riot Games created for Valorant, their competitive first person shooter. The issue with Vanguard is that it's quite an aggressive anti-cheat, it runs on Ring 0 as a windows kernel driver. Hence, why some people call it a "rootkit".

It's no different than easy anticheat which many games use.

TL;DR, every anti-cheat has root kitted your computer and we're just one exploit away from any of those kits creating a major security incident.

Don't game on a computer with any other sensitive information on it.

Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#16

Post by sieabahlpark »

kebokyo wrote: post #12

[flagged]

It's not racist to point out the CCPs ties to a company. You equating the CCP to be "The Chinese" is actually speaking more to your own racism as you can't differentiate from the government and the people it supposedly "represents"

Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#18

Post by pixl97 »

kebokyo wrote: post #12

[flagged]

>Just because a company is based in China doesn’t mean it is fully controlled by the CCP,

If I were a non US company I would automatically assume said company is fully controlled (or I should say compelled) by the US .gov to gather information on foreign companies and governments. US companies such as Apple have had to outright public battles with the .gov to stop this data collecting, and we've learned again and again a large portion of companies just go silently with it.

What I would ask is, do you think China is not asking their internal companies for this information. And if you think no, how nieve do you have to be?

Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#19

Post by gentleman11 »

The core issue is software freedom. Software, when it’s commercial, is something you basically give control of your hardware to and you have to trust that it won’t abuse that power. Or, you dont even use your own hardware, and you just send your data in an even more opaque way to the cloud. Will it be misused?

Typically, yes, egregiously. We need either computing platforms that sandbox things fully, or else full control over our software. And an end to these Eula’s Eula’s that, let’s be honest, could ask for anything and we couldn’t say no. Even governments get stuck here and can’t refuse

Re: Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer

#20

Post by KyleBerezin »

kebokyo wrote: post #12

[flagged]

>"Just because a company is based in China doesn’t mean it is fully controlled by the CCP..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprises_of_Chi... "State-owned enterprises accounted for over 60% of China's market capitalization in 2019"

The CCP owns controlling shares is most Chinese companies, including tencent.

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