Original Post — Direct link

Is Riot planning to do something about AHK? They stated they tolerate AHK since it gives access to the game for certain people.

Now there are easy to find AHK scripts ( Coloraimbot + Triggerbot + NoRecoil ) in easy to find forums. Completely for free and without any foreknowledge to use. These scripts are not detected by Vanguard.

The kids on the forums and in comments of youtube vids which are advertising this, are sh*tting their pants of happiness.

The scripts are accessable for over 2 weeks. Since almost a week some guy combined the 3 above stated scripts in one. There are players cheating by using AHK for several days and nothing is happening. I know it's a beta and I know ranked mm isn't even out. But imagine the spread of cheaters, once ranked is released.

Honestely, I just would like a statement by Riot whats the future plans with AHK. Just to know if I am waisting my time with the game.

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about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

I have something coming for this in the next patch, it won't be a perfect solution but it'll be a start.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by IAmAGoodPersonn

Are you going to ban them? You gonna ban everyone using ahk or you can tell who is using this? You gonna warn first?

We're not going to mass ban AHK users.

No bans for AHK unless we detect that they're using blatantly cheaty scripts (e.g. pixelbot or recoil helpers).

If we decided that AHK had to stop completely we would try to prevent AHK from working with the game and then warn people that circumventing the protection would mean a ban.

For now I'm working on making AHK a less good tool for cheating without stopping it outright.

I'm willing to take more steps in the future if this first approach doesn't get it done.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by joshmaaaaaaans

Can I google these ahk cheats without being banned by the vanguard driver? Or does it pick up my google searches and youtubes and is like yo this dudes trying to look up cheats ban this f**k! I just wanna see what it looks like.

If the game's not running you won't get banned for anything. The part that runs at boot doesn't store anything or report back to our servers so we have no ability to detect any cheats if you're not playing.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by 77R4PTOR

Hi, will we ever know that a person we reported was banned? I dont even mean cheating, because so far, Ive seen a lot of shady things going on on the server, but nothing 100% sure it was a cheat, but Ive seen a lot of insults, hate speech etc...I´ve reported them all, but I feel like they all go to an empty no return cloud. I dont know if you think that way, but when a player reports someone for any valid reason and gets feedback from that report saying that actions were taken, it give us a sense of security in game, and a job well done, and other games have that, like cs:go. Is that a thing to come in Valorant?

I'd like us to have a report feedback system so that you can know that your reports led to action. Not sure when we'll get to build it though.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by we69420

Have y’all reconsidered 24/7 full control anti-cheat now that we know it’s not actually any more adept at catching hackers than any other anti-cheat?

So far we're happy with the performance of Vanguard

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by Zodiii

Do you ever do talks or anything on the anti-cheat stuff? I'm a seasoned Cybersecurity analyst, and it's really interesting to me how it's being done. We see a lot of push into analytics (think posturing and profiling) and outlier detection in my space, is it going the same way with games? Can you flag on increasingly risky behavior and then pop a manual review task? It's kind of a cool intersect of worlds/techniques.

Sometimes! Recently I wrote an article about the Fog of War system which is less about security and more just software engineering: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war

Hopefully we'll have more talks about the data analytics side of anti-cheat in the coming year.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by Zodiii

That's awesome! That was a neat read. The pragmatic approach is always good, so many people throw out the whole thing because it's not perfect. But I assume cheats are similar to attackers, it's all about increasing that barrier to entry and making it harder and harder until it's not worth it except to all but the most dedicated, and then you build detections around their behaviors. I think I have more questions now than I did before. Really cool, keep up the good work!

Thanks!

It's exactly like you say, very similar to threat modeling in infosec :)

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by we69420

Can the anti-cheat read my open webpages or record my input when the game is open?

We're not interested in your browsing habits.

It's important to know though that almost every program on your computer can record your input or read your open webpages. This is because it doesn't take any special permissions to do so (not even admin access in many cases).

If this is something that you're worried about I recommend being extra careful about the software you install.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by throwaway237169

Please whatever you do keep in mind those who struggle with motor disabilities who use ahk has a way to rebind keys to assist with those disabilities to make the game easier under the circumstances. Banning only the mouse mouse events from allowing the use of these aimbots would suffice without restricting some players with disabilities.

This is what I'm planning for this patch, we'll see how it goes. I hope we don't need to block all the features of AHK.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by GamerKey

Quick question regarding the article about fog of war:

How did you handle wallbanging people if the engine might despawn an actor due to, let's call it something like, "not being line-of-sight relevant"?

If the actor doesn't exist for the client I'd wager their hitbox doesn't, either, otherwise wallhacks could just start tracking and making hitboxes visible.

And if the maps are carefully designed to not contain wallbangs between two cells that cannot see each other to solve this problem, isn't that a concern that needs to be communicated clearly to future map-makers?

The hitboxes always exist on the server even when they don't exist on the client and since shooting is server authoritative ("server sided") then the game will always know whether you hit or not.

I've tried to make the fog of war system as light on map authoring requirements as possible and so far the only real restriction is that in some situations geometry needs to be tagged as "transparent to fog of war" to avoid bugs. This doesn't happen very often though and in general map designers don't need to think about fog of war at all.

about 4 years ago - /u/RiotArkem - Direct link

Originally posted by Doulikevidya

To give you a more forward response to what the anticheat dev said... I think he is insinuating that yes, the anticheat can read your webpages and record your inputs. He just states that riot has no interest in any of your browsing habits.

I could be wrong, but that's how I interpreted his answer.

The distinction that I'm making is that it's not that Vanguard being an anti-cheat gives it the ability to read things from your computer, it's that all regular programs on your PC can access basically everything.

Every game you install, every program (Discord, Steam, OBS, GeForce Experience, Origin, Epic Game Store, Battle.net, etc etc) could read your browsing history and record your keystrokes.

Most programs are well behaved but it's not because they are restricted in their permissions (like phone apps) but because the developers have no interest in your browsing history (same with Vanguard).