A big headline circulating recently is that two big Streamers playing in a highly competitive Apex Legends Tournament were hacked mid-game to give them cheats. Which means their systems were compromised.
Obviously the debate rages on about how, exactly, this compromise happened. But a prevailing theory that has good support right now is that Apex's kernel level anti-cheat software, Easy Anti-Cheat (or EAC) has a vulnerability that can be exploited for remote code execution.
This is always a risk, and always a possibility, when kernel level anti-cheat software is involved. When such software is deployed, it is effectively dropping a rootkit onto a system. The level of privilege afforded allows bypassing and evasion of security software, installation of malware, eavesdropping on keystrokes to steal passwords, and yes - Even infection of the BIOS.
While there is not sufficient evidence to say that EAC was the culprit in this case, nor that any of the above risks were leveraged through EAC, it should still give us all extreme pause.
EAC is deployed with a wide number of games. Often without the explicit knowledge of the end user. Are you playing Helldivers right now? It uses kernel level anti-cheat (though noy EAC). And so forth. So many people don't know that they have this vulnerability, and security software cannot catch it.
And by the way, are you currently playing VRChat?
Yes, VRChat uses EAC. If this turns out to be a vulnerability in EAC, your computer could be compromised through VRChat.
Stay safe everyone.
