Chinese-owned Riot installs rootkit on every League of Legends players' computer • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by Cody-99 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 4:04 AM UTC

sodality2 wrote: post #28

Cody-99 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes..? Why would that render it useless? I don't see how vanguard would be any less effective by publishing the source code.

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

#32

Post by sodality2 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 4:09 AM UTC

Cody-99 wrote: post #31

sodality2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes..? Why would that render it useless? I don't see how vanguard would be any less effective by publishing the source code.

Because people will find exploits that allow them to bypass it. Anti cheats in general rely on tons of factors but mainly a lack of knowledge on exactly how HWID bans are enacted, what injections by what processes are put under scrutiny, etc. With source available, all of that stuff is going to be a cake walk for cheaters to bypass. It’s not just a matter of “here’s the source but we are running as ring -n so it doesn’t matter”. full knowledge of AC behavior is a huge boon to bypassing, because there’s almost certainly problems with the implementation that a 15 year old will go on to discover and exploit.

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

#33

Post by Delogrand » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:38 PM UTC

olliej wrote: post #26

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…

There is a major difference that is worth the clickbait from what you call the standard for windows anti-cheat. Vanguard requires secure boot and runs the moment a computer is powered on, regardless if the game is open or not.