League of Legends publisher Riot Games is offering bounties of up to $100,000 to hackers who can find exploits in its Valorant anti-cheat system. The company posted the announcement on HackerOne where it offered a minimum of $250 for vulnerabilities in any Riot software, but also posted a minimum bounty of $25,000 for specific Vanguard bounties. According to Riot, qualifying bugs will be rewarded based on severity and participating hackers may not be rewarded if they publicize the bug first instead of coordinating with Riot.
“Alongside our new game VALORANT, we have deployed our new anti-cheat solution Vanguard that leverages a kernel driver to combat cheaters more effectively. To reinforce our commitment to our players’ security, we are offering special bounties for up to $100,000 for high quality reports that demonstrate practical exploits leveraging the Vanguard kernel driver,” Valorant posted on its HackerOne page.
Valorant is currently in Beta but users have previously expressed their concern over its anti-cheat engine that activates on start-up. To address the increasing concerns over potential privacy issues, Riot’s Paul Chamberlain explained on the game’s Reddit page that Vanguard starts up on system boot to ensure that cheats are not simply loaded before starting up the game. However, Riot also assured players that the company is open to changing its strategy should players not be satisfied with the steps it is taking.
