3 ms·

Well, Riot Games just today (!) admitted to hard-bricking cheating hardware [1]. This kind of stuff definitely is malware, and your comment aged like milk. [1]

Well, Riot Games just today (!) admitted to hard-bricking cheating hardware [1]. This kind of stuff definitely is malware, and your comment aged like milk. [1] https://videocardz.com/newz/riot-games-on-valorant-dma-cheat-firmware-block-congrats-to-the-owners-of-a-brand-new-6k-paperweight https://videocardz.com/newz/riot-games-on-valorant-dma-cheat...

nekzn 5mo ago
You are confusing drm with anti cheats. In any case, good for Riot, and good especially for their players!
- john_strinlai 5mo ago
  anti-cheat is not perfect. they will brick a legitimate user's pc. that is the opposite of "good for their players". and even if someone is cheating on a riot game, bricking their pc is obviously fucked, and will end up biting riot in the ass (i.e. not good for riot, either).
  - Rohansi 5mo ago
    Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have.
    - john_strinlai 5mo ago
      >Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? the one we're talking about, where riot tweeted "congrats on your $6k paperweights". >The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have. you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else, and apparently riot will still gladly brick your pc. you apparently don't even need the games currently installed! if you have vanguard leftover from months ago when you did play, remove all the games, and then decide to tinker around with dma for fun/learning/who cares, riot will still come after you, despite not even playing their games. even if that seems unlikely, refer back to sentence #2 of my comment: "and even if someone is cheating on a riot game, bricking their pc is obviously fucked, and will end up biting riot in the ass (i.e. not good for riot, either)."
      - Rohansi 5mo ago
        Where does it say Riot bricked anything? They referred to the cards as paperweights but they don't need to be bricked to be a paperweight, being useless to the cheater due to Vanguard protections is enough. They definitely didn't brick anyone's PC. > you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else I don't think there's a way to check what memory a DMA card is accessing. I also don't see why legitimate users would have a DMA card. I think it's fair for them to assume a connection is there and react.
        john_strinlai 5mo ago
        >They referred to the cards as paperweights DMA cards are not $6k, so it is obvious that riot is not talking about the DMA card specifically. they are ~$300 - ~$700. the image they tweeted alongside was that of broken computers, not of broken DMA cards. i am not sure why riot would admit to bricking $6k PCs if they werent. that would also be exceptionally stupid. admittedly, the more i look into it, it appears the reports are soft-bricking (i.e., requiring a complete wipe and reinstallation of the OS, not hard-bricking). which is less awful, but still really awful. >I also don't see why legitimate users would have a DMA card. doesn't matter at all. if its not being used to interact with riot games, its none of riot's business and not on riot to determine the legitimacy of owning one. >I think it's fair for them to assume a connection is there and react. i think this is a wild take. this is effectively giving ownership of your software and hardware to riot. if the reaction was simply to ban you from riot servers and games, sure, i could be convinced that's acceptable. but the reaction is beyond that.
        Rohansi 5mo ago
        > the image they tweeted alongside was that of broken computers, not of broken DMA cards. Actually, the image they tweeted shows a ton of PCIe cards. > DMA cards are not $6k The ones shown in the image they tweeted are! ($5,800 USD -> https://www.heinodma.com/ https://www.heinodma.com/) > reports are soft-bricking (i.e., requiring a complete wipe and reinstallation of the OS, not hard-bricking) I still don't think anything is actually bricked. They are just enabling and enforcing IOMMU, HVCI, etc. which prevents them from using their DMA card to cheat. I'm sure they could restore functionality by removing Riot's games and anticheat, disabling IOMMU and HVCI, etc.
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  No confusion at all. Same unacceptable "we own your machine now" nonsense.
fwip 5mo ago
It's not a hard-brick. Reinstalling Windows fixes it.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
Levitating 5mo ago
Malware is deceitful, you're not aware of its presence. Anti-Cheat does what it's promises, and I've personally found Riot fairly transparent regarding Vanguard. You don't have to play Valorant, but if you do you probably want to play without cheaters. It's either get hated for having cheaters (like CS2) or get hated for having invasive Anti-Cheat (Valorant). There's no third option.
- Ferret7446 5mo ago
  So if malware announces itself, it is no longer malware but anticheat? "If you do not wire the money, the anticheat will activate and delete all your data"
  - Levitating 5mo ago
    > So if malware announces itself, it is no longer malware but anticheat? If it announces itself after installation it would obviously be malware. But if the software does exactly what the user expects it to do, and the user installs it with consent, why would it be malware? Otherwise BitLocker or a disk eraser would be malware just because it performs a destructive action. Wikipedia goes by the same definition, it's harmful software that operates without the owners knowledge. It may seem like a weird hill to die on, but calling every Anti-Cheat or DRM a "rootkit" or malware kind of takes any meaning away from the term. And is also just misinformative to the workings of DRM and Anti-Cheat.
    - mschuster91 5mo ago
      > It may seem like a weird hill to die on, but calling every Anti-Cheat or DRM a "rootkit" or malware kind of takes any meaning away from the term. It's not the first time that DRM has caused damage. The Valorant one is particularly bad as no user should expect hardware damage or data loss even if they cheat, but I still 'member Sony's DRM that was a legitimate rootkit [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

nekzn 5mo ago

You are confusing drm with anti cheats. In any case, good for Riot, and good especially for their players!

john_strinlai 5mo ago
anti-cheat is not perfect. they will brick a legitimate user's pc. that is the opposite of "good for their players". and even if someone is cheating on a riot game, bricking their pc is obviously fucked, and will end up biting riot in the ass (i.e. not good for riot, either).
- Rohansi 5mo ago
  Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have.
  - john_strinlai 5mo ago
    >Which anti-cheat has bricked users' PCs? the one we're talking about, where riot tweeted "congrats on your $6k paperweights". >The Riot example above specifically targets DMA cards (cheating hardware) which no legitimate user will have. you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else, and apparently riot will still gladly brick your pc. you apparently don't even need the games currently installed! if you have vanguard leftover from months ago when you did play, remove all the games, and then decide to tinker around with dma for fun/learning/who cares, riot will still come after you, despite not even playing their games. even if that seems unlikely, refer back to sentence #2 of my comment: "and even if someone is cheating on a riot game, bricking their pc is obviously fucked, and will end up biting riot in the ass (i.e. not good for riot, either)."
    - Rohansi 5mo ago
      Where does it say Riot bricked anything? They referred to the cards as paperweights but they don't need to be bricked to be a paperweight, being useless to the cheater due to Vanguard protections is enough. They definitely didn't brick anyone's PC. > you can play league/valorant legitimately, be using dma for whatever else I don't think there's a way to check what memory a DMA card is accessing. I also don't see why legitimate users would have a DMA card. I think it's fair for them to assume a connection is there and react.
      - john_strinlai 5mo ago
        >They referred to the cards as paperweights DMA cards are not $6k, so it is obvious that riot is not talking about the DMA card specifically. they are ~$300 - ~$700. the image they tweeted alongside was that of broken computers, not of broken DMA cards. i am not sure why riot would admit to bricking $6k PCs if they werent. that would also be exceptionally stupid. admittedly, the more i look into it, it appears the reports are soft-bricking (i.e., requiring a complete wipe and reinstallation of the OS, not hard-bricking). which is less awful, but still really awful. >I also don't see why legitimate users would have a DMA card. doesn't matter at all. if its not being used to interact with riot games, its none of riot's business and not on riot to determine the legitimacy of owning one. >I think it's fair for them to assume a connection is there and react. i think this is a wild take. this is effectively giving ownership of your software and hardware to riot. if the reaction was simply to ban you from riot servers and games, sure, i could be convinced that's acceptable. but the reaction is beyond that.
        Rohansi 5mo ago
        > the image they tweeted alongside was that of broken computers, not of broken DMA cards. Actually, the image they tweeted shows a ton of PCIe cards. > DMA cards are not $6k The ones shown in the image they tweeted are! ($5,800 USD -> https://www.heinodma.com/ https://www.heinodma.com/) > reports are soft-bricking (i.e., requiring a complete wipe and reinstallation of the OS, not hard-bricking) I still don't think anything is actually bricked. They are just enabling and enforcing IOMMU, HVCI, etc. which prevents them from using their DMA card to cheat. I'm sure they could restore functionality by removing Riot's games and anticheat, disabling IOMMU and HVCI, etc.
matheusmoreira 5mo ago
No confusion at all. Same unacceptable "we own your machine now" nonsense.

fwip 5mo ago

It's not a hard-brick. Reinstalling Windows fixes it.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

Levitating 5mo ago

Malware is deceitful, you're not aware of its presence. Anti-Cheat does what it's promises, and I've personally found Riot fairly transparent regarding Vanguard. You don't have to play Valorant, but if you do you probably want to play without cheaters. It's either get hated for having cheaters (like CS2) or get hated for having invasive Anti-Cheat (Valorant). There's no third option.

Ferret7446 5mo ago
So if malware announces itself, it is no longer malware but anticheat? "If you do not wire the money, the anticheat will activate and delete all your data"
- Levitating 5mo ago
  > So if malware announces itself, it is no longer malware but anticheat? If it announces itself after installation it would obviously be malware. But if the software does exactly what the user expects it to do, and the user installs it with consent, why would it be malware? Otherwise BitLocker or a disk eraser would be malware just because it performs a destructive action. Wikipedia goes by the same definition, it's harmful software that operates without the owners knowledge. It may seem like a weird hill to die on, but calling every Anti-Cheat or DRM a "rootkit" or malware kind of takes any meaning away from the term. And is also just misinformative to the workings of DRM and Anti-Cheat.
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    > It may seem like a weird hill to die on, but calling every Anti-Cheat or DRM a "rootkit" or malware kind of takes any meaning away from the term. It's not the first time that DRM has caused damage. The Valorant one is particularly bad as no user should expect hardware damage or data loss even if they cheat, but I still 'member Sony's DRM that was a legitimate rootkit [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...