Riot’s security software Vanguard was recently released in League of Legends, and players weren’t thrilled with it, saying the anti-cheat is “tampering with unrelated files, preventing startup programs from booting, causing other programs to crash” and more.
If that wasn’t enough, some alarming code appeared online making players of both League of Legends and Valorant worried about their security. One user called JustAReverser claims they found evidence of Vanguard taking screenshots of your whole screen, including the game, Discord chats, and whatever else you have opened.
“Vanguard takes screenshots. It can capture your entire screen, overlays and all, that means even your Discord chats might get caught. What’s more, it has the capability to switch to full screen mode, capturing your whole desktop, which then gets uploaded directly to their servers.
“This module will take a screenshot based on parameters sent by vanguard servers.
If vanguard has nothing against you it will have the parameter
window_title = ‘VALORANT'”
Vanguard is a kernel-level software, which means it has access to the deepest layers of your PC, some argue, and other games take screenshots too, so there is nothing new here. However, others say that those games just capture your game, not the whole screen with potentially sensitive information that an anti-cheat has no business viewing.
Now, I’m not a coder and can’t confirm whether or not the program does what JustAReverser claims. Plus, there is no guarantee the code was taken from Vanguard, although I don’t see why anyone would come up with such stories. The fact is people started questioning Riot about it, although some say it’s no wonder software with such a high level of access has these privileges.
