What just happened? Activision courted some controversy when it announced it was bringing kernel-level anti-cheat, which has brought about privacy concerns, to its latest Call of Duty game as well as Warzone. A recent leak could seriously complicate those plans.
A Twitter account called “Anti-Cheat Police Department,” which tracks news about cheating in online games, revealed today that the driver has leaked for the “RICOCHET” anti-cheat system coming to Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone. RICOCHET is supposed to launch alongside Vanguard on November 5 and then come to Warzone later.
“P2C devs are already reversing it, this is already very bad,” the tweet reads.
Two screenshots accompany the tweet as proof. One shows what looks like a forum post purporting to contain a link to an obfuscated driver (above). The second shot shows the signature details of the driver, indicating Activision signed it on September 30th (below). The struggle between game developers and cheaters is always a cat-and-mouse game, but at the very least, this leak could give cheat developers a serious head start.
Activision unveiled RICOCHET just yesterday. Kernel-level anti-cheat is controversial because it gains access into a user’s system so deep that it may pose a security risk. However, It is becoming increasingly popular, with games like Valorant, PUBG, and Ark: Survival Evolved utilizing it. Valorant developer Riot Games says it needs kernel-level anti-cheat to detect cheating software that itself uses kernel-level drivers. To assuage privacy concerns, Activision pointed out that RICOCHET at first won’t be always-on but will only activate once you start playing Call of Duty.
In a subsequent tweet, AntiCheatPC is optimistic about the effectiveness of Valorant’s anti-cheat. Their investigation seems to indicate that it’s difficult to find working Valorant cheats that the game can’t detect.
“Anybody that plays Valorant could probably vouch that @RiotVanguard anti-cheat Works,” they write.