Ring 0 of fire: Does Riot Games’ new anti-cheat measure go too far?
Found on Ars Technica on Friday, 17 April 2020
While the Vanguard anti-cheat client only launches when Valorant is being played, Riot says the system also makes use of a "kernel mode driver" that starts operating as soon as Windows boots up. That's a big change from Riot's pre-Vanguard anti-cheat systems, which operated entirely at the more common "user mode" level, just like most Windows executables.
At the kernel level, any flaws in Riot's driver code could create system-wide, "blue screen of death"-style crashes, as opposed to more localized application-specific glitches. And a serious oversight in the driver, like a buffer overflow exploit, could let an attacker install their own malicious code at an extremely low level, where it could be extremely dangerous.
How about no? Granting random software such access ist a big no-no. On top of that, Riot is owned by chinese Tencent.