I don’t think you understand how code works. What are you worried about it doing, and why does it need admin permissions to do that?
“Kernel” anticheat isn’t really any more dangerous than any other executable you run on Windows. Code from untrusted devs isn’t safe whether it has admin or not. Games made by small devs are much more dangerous than anything put out directly by Riot or Valve.
There’s a lot of hullabaloo that’s seeded and encouraged by those who make money on botting and cheats. It’s kind of valid, but it’s not a larger risk than installing pubg or among us or any other small game.
If you really want to be secure, you have to separate your gaming and personal machines, at least the OS and drives.
The Windows limitation might even make it more secure in that way, if you’re willing to limit Windows to games and use Linux for personal stuff. Even then, keeping drives isolated is difficult.
“Kernel” anticheat isn’t really any more dangerous than any other executable you run on Windows. Code from untrusted devs isn’t safe whether it has admin or not. Games made by small devs are much more dangerous than anything put out directly by Riot or Valve.
Remember when Sony automatically installed a rootkit on customers’ computers if they put in their legally purchased music CD to listen to, that was a security vulnerability that hackers quickly found and exploited? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Incompetence is just as dangerous as malice, and big companies have shown they don’t bother to take the care needed to protect your device.
I’ve seen this posted before, this is the first time I’ve actually read the whole thing. I knew what it was, and what it did, but I never knew about the “uninstaller” part of it.
The fact that they doubled down and made an uninstaller for it that didn’t actually uninstall it and ADDED ANOTHER root kit + a backdoor to the system, blows my mind.
I don’t think YOU understand how code works. Having a program that you can’t verify being run as the highest priority level in your system is a stupid idea. You don’t know how secure it is or if it has vulnerabilities because again, it’s not open source. They are not even security experts, they are a game development company (which will hire security experts, sure, but the main focus not being security is important) and riot is not know for having a super robust game.
Do you really trust them to release a program that can’t be hacked into, which then would give the hacker a way to elevate privileges into the highest security level? Even if you trust them not to harvest and sell private data, you have to also trust them to make an unhackable program.
Yeah, I trust Riot and Valve more than I trust Sony or the developers of Lethal Company or Among Us. Even with higher privs than those other companies get.
Because if PubG is compromised, I’m just as vulnerable as I am if Riot is compromised.
I get the technical difference, but when you combine it with practicality, it doesn’t make much difference on one hand. On the other, it does remove cheaters from my games.
If I cared that much I’d have ALL my games on a separate OS anyway. Maybe I will at some point.
What are you talking about!? It makes all of the difference. I know a game can’t break my system, I know a game can’t erase files I keep under root user, I know a game can’t write outside of a very limited set of folders my user has write permissions, the moment you allow games to run on root all of these go out the window.
On the other, it does remove cheaters from my games.
Sure, because games that do this have no cheaters… What bubble do you live under? Do you think that games like Dota or CS have more cheaters than Ghost of Tsushima? Literally games that have a competitive scene which is so big that’s televised in sports channels don’t need root access, but a co-op map on a game does!?
And that’s without getting into the fact that client side anti-cheat is a losing battle, you could even have full control of the hardware and software and still wouldn’t be 100% secure.