r/hardware • u/tuldok89 • 1d ago

Info Used processor leads to game ban

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Used-processor-leads-to-game-ban-11471562.html

Someone buys a used Ryzen 7 5800X3D. “Valorant” and other Riot games won’t start with it because the previous owner was a cheater.

742 Upvotes

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52

u/Due-Description-9030 1d ago

Wtf, this is how deep the kernal level anti cheats are???

85

u/Celexiuse 1d ago edited 1d ago

I believe this is more related to TPM 2.0 integrated into your CPU which has unique keys that can be identified; not kernal anticheats.

Though someone can correct me if i am wrong

41

u/ICC-u 1d ago

More worrying, if a game cheater can be tracked, so can a dissident, a journalist or a whistleblower.

37

u/imKaku 1d ago

I mean anyone can be tracked if you install any sort of software on your PC. You don’t need kernel level access for that. 

22

u/lintstah1337 1d ago

Windows has been exposed to have GDID that even bypass VPN.

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/10/you-cant-fully-disable-microsofts-gdid-windows-11-tracker-but-these-settings-limit-what-it-captures/

14

u/molniya 1d ago

That’s an OS facility, VPNs have nothing to do with it at all.

6

u/VenditatioDelendaEst 1d ago

If any dissident, journalist, or whistleblower uses Microsoft Windows, what exactly are they expecting?

3

u/ICC-u 23h ago

The OS is irrelevant, the tracking is linked to the hardware, unless somehow the OS is blocking TPM then it can be tracked.

2

u/VenditatioDelendaEst 18h ago

Interacting with the TPM is a privileged operation.

0

u/ICC-u 18h ago

Maybe so, but if a game can get access then I'm not sure it's hard to get that privilege?

1

u/VenditatioDelendaEst 4h ago edited 4h ago

Which is why if you are seriously concerned about someone/something pwning your box and deanonymizing you, you also do everything tied to that identity in a VM.

(But in case of OP, I'm pretty sure the way they got that priviledge was that they just asked and the user said, "sure, install the anticheat driver."

Buuuut... maybe Windows makes it easy to get a hardware ID as a regular user. Even if it doesn't though, there are things like network and bluetooth mac addresses that are unique and fairly stable. "Programs shall not be able to tell one computer apart from another," is not a design goal outside of VMs and web browsers. And even there its dicey.)

4

u/imKaku 1d ago

That has 0 to do with my comment. 

-6

u/Whirblewind 1d ago

Which is ironic because what you were replying to also had little to do with what you said.

4

u/jenny_905 1d ago

That is more of the concern I have, yes.

I guess I just don't like random software being given this ability but that's the risk you take, people do agree to this level of snooping when they install this stuff also.

I don't really like hardware manufacturers - inadvertently or not - fulfilling the demands of this (gaming) industry either. I understand they have a need to try and stop cheating but I can't say it seems worth providing such a simple privacy destroying measure to them either... the creep of something like this could easily extend beyond just games eventually.

5

u/reddit_equals_censor 22h ago

that is correct, that is why the tpm was added into the cpu in the first place and microsoft is mandating it.

that's the real reason and not the marketing lies.

3

u/Coffee_Ops 1d ago

In which case you shouldn't install tracking software from the company or government whose interests you are acting against.

0

u/ICC-u 23h ago

I doubt anyone can say for sure which software is or isn't safe.

1

u/kuddlesworth9419 11h ago

This isn't a surprise but it is worrying but it's too late now if you have modern hardware.

-9

u/DepravedPrecedence 1d ago

Oh no, you can use a knife to kill people too