// THE VERGE — CYBERSECURITY
Riot now lets you enable its anti-cheat when you want to
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You’ll now be able to use Vanguard on demand instead of having it always running in the background.
You’ll now be able to use Vanguard on demand instead of having it always running in the background.
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If League of Legends and Valorant players have the right hardware and elect to opt into “pre-boot security mechanisms and Windows’ own native protection features,” then, starting today, they can switch the Vanguard anti-cheat software from always-on to one that’s “on demand.” With “Vanguard Pre-Check,” the kernel-level driver won’t launch when your system does, according to a blog post from Phillip Koskinas, Riot’s head of anti-cheat.
Riot is able to introduce this new feature now after working with the Xbox OS Security Team at Microsoft on improvements to the Windows kernel that lock out the kind of driver and memory exploits that cheats use to employ wallhacks, aimbot, triggerbot, and other tools. To solve the problem of knowing if cheats have been loaded without running 24/7, Riot is tapping into a Windows security feature called the Runtime Driver Attestation Report that it relies on for a secured list of the device drivers loaded since boot.
Running at least Windows 11 25H2 is part of the requirement, which he says is “mostly because the driver attestation report was only initially added in this version, but it’s also because, due to the natural progression of security, it gets more convenient to cheat the older your operating system is.”