Riot Vanguard update disables DMA cheating hardware in Valorant

A recent update to Riot Games' Vanguard anti-cheat system has successfully countered a sophisticated cheating method, rendering specialized hardware unusable and sparking a debate over the aggressive tactics used to protect competitive integrity. The update specifically targets devices that use Direct Memory Access (DMA) to cheat in games like Valorant.

DMA cheating involves a secondary piece of hardware, typically a PCIe card, that reads a game's memory directly from the system's RAM, bypassing the operating system and traditional kernel-level anti-cheat scans. To function, these devices use custom firmware that disguises them as standard storage hardware, such as SATA or NVMe drives.

The new Vanguard countermeasure activates a hardware-level security feature called the Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) in modern motherboards. When the anti-cheat detects suspicious DMA activity during a game, it triggers an IOMMU restart warning. Following this trigger, the firmware on the DMA device is corrupted, making the hardware permanently inoperable on that system.

Reports from users indicate the damage persists even after closing the game, uninstalling Vanguard, or restarting...