Major UEFI Flaw Enables Game Cheats On ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte & MSI Motherboards

Players of Riot Games on the PC are familiar with the Vanguard kernel-level anti-cheat software by now. However, even with it installed and updated, gamers may have received a notice that their system is restricted from launching the popular game Valorant. This isn't an accident—per a blog post from Riot Games, a key vulnerability in modern UEFI firmware still left space open during boot-up before the system's memory could be secured by anti-cheat. The Vanguard research team realized that this vulnerability could be used by cheating software or other bad actors, and thus contacted ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock to collaborate on comprehensive BIOS updates across all the major motherboard makers. Each vendor also posted their own Security Advisory, but the discovery is ultimately the Vanguard research team's.

The exact nature of the vulnerability is this: Modern systems have something called Pre-Boot DMA (Direct Memory Access ...