Hackers Entered Activision’s New Anti-Cheat System: How Bad Is This News?

RICOCHET, an ambitious kernel-level anti-cheat system, which is Activision's new secret tool against cheaters, has already ended up in the hands of reverse engineering hackers, according to @AntiCheatPD. The Twitter group members say they have already seen evidence of the source code being worked on by pay-to-cheat devs, even though RICOCHET is supposed to come out this December alongside the COD: Warzone Pacific update.

The leak, however, cannot have come as too much of a shock for Activision that deliberately released its new system ahead of time for some players to test it and report possible bugs that should be eliminated before the big rollout in December. The technical director of Epic Games, Paul Chamberlain, says that the pros of running a public test of the game that is not yet ready for release outweigh the cons of having it looked at early by cheat devs.

RICOCHET is a system intended to run in the very core of the operating system – the kernel – that can access and manage many of the machine's central functions. The new anti-cheat technology will detect and report any software apps and programs that try to engage with Call of Duty: Warzone, thus enabling the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team to establish if the computer is employing unauthorized processes to tamper with the game.

To soothe players who worry about the new system being too invasive, Activision promised that its anti-cheat would only work when users turned on Call of Duty: Warzone and shut down the moment the game session was over.

Can a kernel-level anti-cheat system like RICOCHET or Riot Games’ Vanguard be an effective way to end the war between cheaters and game devs? Do you have any security concerns related to the use of such a tool? Let us know what you think in the comments and share this post with friends!