Like every popular game on the planet, Valorant is also having a cheating problem which is why Riot Games had to implement a controversial anti-cheat method that runs the entire time even if you are not playing the game. The Valorant anti-cheat program is called Vanguard and has come under fire in recent weeks for being a more invasive anti-cheat program.
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If you download Valorant, Vanguard is automatically installed on your PC and always runs with high privileges. Riot explained in a blog post why the developer took this method in the game saying that;
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#068BED” class=”” size=”21″]”If anti-cheat software is only run in user-mode, its capabilities would be compromised by a cheat running at a higher privilege level. For example, some of the more advanced cheating communities have used Direct Memory Access (DMA) to rebroadcast memory to a separate computer for later processing.”[/perfectpullquote]
While the Valorant anti-cheat program sounds shady, Riot has insisted that Vanguard does not collect or process any of your personal information beyond the current League of Legends anti-cheat software does. This means it is completely safe to use as it does “not want to know more about your machine than what is necessary to maintain high integrity in your game”, claims Riot.
With that being said, Riot has taken an extra step with the Valorant anti-cheat software by offering a huge bounty of money for players who manage to find any Vanguard exploits. The developer has listed some Valorant-specific bounties on HackerOne, a site where companies offer rewards to hackers who can expose security threats in their software. Users can earn up to $100,000 if they manage to find any exploits across the specific bounties.
The highest rewards involve finding a kernel-level threat related to a network attack with no user interaction. Users can bank $100,000 for discovering any one of the exploits.
While the method of using HackerOne to find exploits is nothing new, it goes a long way to show how determined Riot Games is to make sure Valorant, Vanguard and the anti-cheat systems are safe from any outside attackers. We already know Riot has been issuing Valorant bans for account sharing and botting so it is clear the developer will not be playing games with hackers and those who try to go against their Terms of Use.
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