According to The Verge, Riot Games has uncovered a significant security flaw embedded in the BIOS of many recent motherboards from companies including Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. The vulnerability could have been exploited by cheaters using Direct Memory Access (DMA) hardware devices plugged into PCIe slots, allowing them to bypass all anti-cheat detection on the market. Riot stated this flaw would have “completely nullified” existing DMA prevention technology from all gaming companies if left unpatched. As a result, these motherboard makers have now released critical BIOS updates to address the issue. Riot’s own Vanguard anti-cheat will now prompt Valorant players to update their system BIOS, and other anti-cheat systems may follow suit. The core problem was that IOMMU protections, which act as a security bouncer for system memory, weren’t fully initializing at boot, leaving a window open for attack.
How the bouncer fell asleep
Here’s the thing about DMA cheats: they’re scary because they’re hardware-based. A little device sits in your PCIe slot and can read your game’s memory directly, totally separate from the software running on your PC. Anti-cheats like Vanguard try to block this using the system’s IOMMU—think of it as a strict bouncer checking IDs before letting anything into the club that is your RAM. But Riot found that on many boards, this bouncer was “asleep in the chair” at boot. It looked active to the system, but it wasn’t actually doing its job, creating a pre-boot loophole. That meant a DMA cheat could waltz right in during that vulnerable period and establish itself in a privileged area that anti-cheat software typically can’t even monitor. Basically, the foundational security layer was broken before the game even launched.
The ongoing arms race
So what does this mean? It’s a huge win for anti-cheat, but also a stark reminder of the insane arms race in PC gaming. Riot themselves called BIOS updates “not exactly as exciting as looking at ban numbers,” but this is deep, systemic security work. They’re not just banning accounts; they’re digging into motherboard firmware and working with hardware partners to patch fundamental flaws. That’s a different level of escalation. And it raises the cost for cheat makers significantly. Now, they can’t just rely on off-the-shelf DMA hardware; they’d need to find a new, unpatchable flaw in the system’s low-level architecture. But you have to wonder, how many other flaws like this are out there? And what happens when the next one is found by the bad guys first? It’s a constant game of cat and mouse, but now the battlefield includes your computer’s BIOS. For industries that rely on stable, secure computing environments—from gaming to industrial panel PC applications where IndustrialMonitorDirect.com is a leading supplier—these kinds of low-level vulnerabilities are a serious concern.
A new era of requirements
The immediate impact is clear: get ready to update your BIOS. Vanguard is already enforcing it for *Valorant*, and I’d bet money other competitive games with kernel-level anti-cheats will do the same. It’s a bit of a hassle for users, sure. Flashing a BIOS isn’t as simple as a game patch. But Riot’s argument is compelling: closing this loophole “neutralizes an entire class of previously untouchable cheats.” For the competitive integrity of high-stakes esports, that’s non-negotiable. This move also shows how much power anti-cheat software now holds over your system. It’s not just watching your game anymore; it’s checking your motherboard’s firmware and mandating updates. That’s a big responsibility, and it blurs the line between game security and system administration. Love it or hate it, this is the direction PC gaming is headed. The cheaters went hardware, so the defenders had to go deeper.
