$100k at Stake For Anyone Who Can Crack Riot Games’ Vanguard3 min read

Riot Games, the mastermind behind LoL and Valorant, has taken an extraordinary step in its fight against hackers. They have offered up a bounty of around $100,000 if anyone can beat their cutting-edge system called Vanguard. Riot is not ready to back down and is setting amazingly high standards for the gaming industry with measures like these. Let’s figure out how this bounty will work.

What is Vanguard?

Vanguard is Riot’s anti-cheat software used for games like Valorant and League of Legends. Since the implementation of Vanguard, Riot’s capacity to identify and stop cheating in its games has dramatically improved. Following its launch, the software has been a solid support pillar in their effort to maintain fair gameplay. Conventional anti-cheat software is installed at the kernel level—the deepest part of a computer’s operating system. Thus, cheats are detected and stopped before they can ever get into a game and affect gameplay. 

The program has demonstrated encouraging outcomes in spite of some issues, such as privacy concerns. However, Riot is investing more in preventive measures since hackers are still finding ways to take advantage of security flaws.

Get paid to find flaws in LoL and Valorant

Riot is getting help from a renowned company called HackerOne, which helps businesses identify and address security vulnerabilities by matching them with ethical hackers. Bug bounty programs aren’t anything new, but Riot is raising the bar by offering some hefty amounts for bugs found in its systems.

HackerOne has helped many gaming companies, such as Rockstar and Epic Games, with similar types of programs. However, Riot is taking a slightly different route by focusing exclusively on kernel-level vulnerabilities related to Vanguard.

Here’s how it works

By teaming up with HackerOne, Riot Games has a band of expert programmers and ethical hackers to find flaws in the software systems. It pays through a tier-based way of monetary rewards depending on the severity and exploitability of the found flaw.

Important information includes:

• Confidentiality: If participants want to claim the bounty, they cannot disclose their discoveries to the public.
• Pay Attention to Kernel-level Exploits: Only flaws at the most fundamental level of the software architecture are eligible.
• Cooperation with HackerOne: This alliance guarantees the safe and expert handling of discoveries.
  

Despite the long-standing partnership between Riot Games and HackerOne, this improved incentive structure indicates a greater focus on proactively protecting Vanguard from possible dangers.

Here’s a list of the top bonuses that Riot announced:

A network attack without any user interaction:

• Execution of Kernel-Level Code: Upto $100,000
• Unauthorized Access to Data: Upto $75,000.

Attack on a Network That Needs User Engagement:

• Execution of Kernel-Level Code: Upto $75,000.
• Unauthorized Access to Data: Up to $50,000.

Local Attack for Privilege Escalation:

• Execution of Kernel-Level Code: Up to $35,000.
• Access to Unauthorized Data: Up to $25,000.

The next phase in Riot’s efforts to uphold its anti-cheat commitment is the bounty program. The intention is that it would help identify vulnerabilities in Vanguard, remediate them, and finally reduce cases of the gaming platform being run by malicious hackers against gamers.

Thus, through this project, Riot intends to fulfill its commitment to building a cheat-free game environment for casual and competitive gamers alike. So, if you’re looking for an account to play Valorant, you can check out cheap Valorant accounts on MitchCactus. While you’re at it, you can also check out their cheap rank boosting for your account!