Call of Duty’s upcoming Anti-Cheat includes a kernel-level driver

Raven Software is finally going to have a breather from the judgy and frustrated community regarding cheaters. I am genuinely excited to see other companies replicating Riot Games’ Valorant anti-cheat approach. For those who do not know, Valorant’s Anti Cheat has a Kernel-level driver for their approach being invented by another company in the gaming industry. Well, Call of Duty’s upcoming anti-cheat will essentially do the same.

The kernel-level driver will start when you boot up your computer, and just like in Valorant, Call of Duty won’t allow players to dive into the game if the anti-cheat did not boot on startup. If they also enforce using TPM and Secure Boot with Windows 11, like Valorant, things would be easier for the developer.

Tip: Kernel-level driver has ring 0 privileges which are higher than a computer administrator. Ring 0 is the level with the most privileges on most operating systems and interacts directly with the physical hardware such as the CPU and memory. Hence, it makes battling cheaters unique.

The bad part about a kernel-level driver is that it runs with elevated privileges until its termination. Wallhacks, Aimbots, and other bits and pieces will no longer preserve longer than a couple of hours, as the machine learning algorithm will take care of them. If the anti-cheat code gets compromised indirectly, the machine on which the anti-cheat is running also becomes vulnerable to attacks. Currently, it has not been an issue with Valorant, but you never know if it would happen or not.

Nevertheless, Call of Duty’s new anti-cheat and its algorithms will bring more joy and entertainment to all the fans around the globe. So, now we know where the threatening message addressed to the cheaters comes from. The empowerment for such a claim comes from the anti-cheat, which design will share similarities with Valorant’s Vanguard.

See you tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/BAvAGPkTzx

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) October 12, 2021