In-depth analysis on Valorant's Guarded Regions
12 days ago
- #Valorant
- #Anti-Cheat
- #Vanguard
- The article discusses Valorant's anti-cheat system, Vanguard, focusing on its guarded regions and how it protects game variables from external access.
- Vanguard uses innovative techniques to prevent cheating, including memory protection mechanisms that cause system page faults when unauthorized access is attempted.
- The author reverse-engineered Vanguard's logic, discovering an IOCTL command that communicates between the game and Vanguard, revealing sophisticated memory hiding techniques.
- Vanguard employs paging tables and process isolation to hide memory regions, ensuring only whitelisted threads can access certain game variables.
- The article provides a detailed breakdown of how paging tables work in modern x86/64 processors, explaining how virtual addresses are translated to physical memory.
- A proof of concept named 'Yumekage' demonstrates how to create hidden memory regions accessible only to specific threads, mimicking Vanguard's approach.
- The author suggests potential improvements for Vanguard, such as randomizing free PML4 entries and removing pool entries to further deter cheaters.
- The article concludes by emphasizing the balance between effective anti-cheat measures and maintaining system stability and performance.