How a Motherboard Vulnerability Helped Cheaters
Riot Games, the studio behind competitive titles like Valorant and League of Legends, recently uncovered a serious security issue affecting certain PC motherboards. This vulnerability could let cheating hardware get a head start during the boot process before normal protections were active.
For anyone who plays competitive games or builds gaming rigs, this discovery is a reminder that security is not just about software. Your hardware and firmware also play a major role in keeping your system fair and safe.
What Riot Games Found
The core of the problem involves DMA devices. DMA stands for Direct Memory Access. These are hardware devices that can read and write system memory directly without going through the CPU for every operation. Normally this is good because it improves performance for things like storage and high speed peripherals.
But if a device can access memory directly, it can also be abused. A cheating device that uses DMA can potentially read game memory, reveal enemy positions or manipulate data in ways that anticheat software is designed to block.
Riot Games discovered that some motherboards allowed these DMA based cheating devices to start operating very early in the boot sequence. This happened before key firmware level protections and anticheat defenses were fully enabled. In other words the device could slip in under the radar and gain access to system memory before the operating system and security tools were in control.
Once a DMA device has that early access it can:
- Read sensitive data from system RAM
- Exfiltrate game information such as positions and states
- Potentially tamper with memory contents
For a competitive shooter like Valorant this is a huge problem because it creates a path for undetectable cheats that do not rely on normal software hooks or drivers.
Why This Matters for PC Gamers and Builders
Although this issue was uncovered in the context of Riot Games anticheat efforts, it matters to anyone who cares about secure and fair PC gaming.
First it highlights how important motherboard firmware and platform security features have become. Modern gaming PCs rely on technologies like secure boot, virtualization based security and input output memory management units to keep rogue devices from accessing system memory. If your board allows DMA devices to run before those protections are active, it undermines the entire security model.
Second it shows that hardware based cheats are not just science fiction. As anticheat software gets better, cheat creators look for more creative paths. External devices that masquerade as harmless peripherals but actually act as DMA tools are one such approach.
From a PC building and hardware perspective, it is worth paying attention to:
- Motherboard BIOS and firmware updates that address security issues
- Platform features like IOMMU that control how devices access memory
- How early in the boot process security features are enabled
When vendors ship fixes for these vulnerabilities, updating firmware becomes just as important as updating GPU drivers for performance.
Keeping Your Gaming Rig Safer
While the original description of the issue is brief, a few practical takeaways are clear for gamers and PC enthusiasts.
Always install BIOS and firmware updates for your motherboard from the official vendor. Security related changelogs are not always heavily advertised but these updates often close exactly the kind of gaps Riot Games identified.
Be cautious about unknown or untrusted PCIe and USB devices. A small external box or custom card can act as a DMA device, so only connect hardware from sources you trust. In high stakes competitive environments, tournaments often restrict what you can plug in for this reason.
Use operating system features that harden device security. On modern versions of Windows, enabling virtualization based security and memory integrity helps limit what devices can do once the OS is in control.
Finally keep an eye on communication from both your game developers and your hardware manufacturers. When a studio like Riot Games finds a hardware level issue, they typically coordinate with vendors to help close the hole. Motherboard makers then push firmware updates that quietly improve your system security even if you are not aware of the exact vulnerability.
As PC gaming becomes more competitive and more security aware, expect to see more collaboration between game developers and hardware companies. This motherboard vulnerability is one example of how the game industry is now actively driving improvements in PC platform security to keep the playing field level for everyone.
Original article and image: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/critical-motherboard-flaw-allows-game-cheats-riot-games-blocks-valorant-players-that-dont-update-bios-security-patches-pushed-live-by-all-major-motherboard-vendors
