Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

osnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 33 posts

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

#21

Post by Cody-99 »

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…

A lot of the outrage is because how riot has acted. They have repeatedly dismissed the concerns of security experts and their community in offhand/very dismissive ways. I don't think the outrage would be anywhere nearly as bad if they took the time to address the legitimate concerns raised and took steps to ease everyone mind (they could be more transparent about it and release the source for example).

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

#26

Post by olliej »

Super clickbait title here.

They’re doing what seems to be literally the standard for windows anti cheat. That they’re Chinese owned is moot as worrying about evil Chinese government hackers is to me a secondary concern to the long and illustrious history of terrible security vulnerabilities in all kernel mode “anti-cheat” drivers.

It seems much more likely that this anti cheat driver is just as buggy as every other anti cheat driver, and will end up being exploited by the same groups that every prior driver has been.

My view is that the correct fix for anti cheating is simply pitting all suspected cheaters against each other rather than trying to ban/block them.

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

#27

Post by iAMkenough »

kebokyo wrote: post #12

[flagged]

I'm concerned with the CCP government using their controlling shares of Tencent to surveil computers around the globe with their kernel-level software for their own national security interests.

Is that racist?

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

#28

Post by sodality2 »

Cody-99 wrote: post #21
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…

A lot of the outrage is because how riot has acted. They have repeatedly dismissed the concerns of security experts and their community in offhand/very dismissive ways. I don't think the outrage would be anywhere nearly as bad if they took the time to address the legitimate concerns raised and took steps to ease everyone mind (they could be more transparent about it and release the source for example).

Release the source? I can assure you that would render the anticheat useless in a matter of weeks. Opaqueness is a feature, to stop reverse engineers.

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

#29

Post by sodality2 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #23
kebokyo wrote: post #12

[flagged]

In the US the government can secretly spy on your data by jumping through various legal hoops. In China the government gets such data as a matter of routine.

If by hoops, you mean rubber stamp judges, I suppose.

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

#30

Post by throw10920 »

kebokyo wrote: post #12

[flagged]

This comment is utterly inappropriate for HN.

> I could tell from the title that this was just going to be racist but I didn’t expect the racism to happen this early into the article lol.

There is, objectively, no racism here. You are intentionally introducing a politically-charged tangent in order to deflect from the points presented in the article.

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

This is objectively false. China has a law that literally compels Chinese companies to do whatever the government wants, with zero restrictions.

Post reply on HN