• Dark ArcA
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    22 hours ago

    They can do whatever they want. Operating systems are effectively divided into two partitions, privileged kernel space and user space.

    When you run a kernel level anticheat what you’re really doing is running a custom program in the kernel space. It effectively becomes part of Windows.

    This means that anything that an operating system can instruct hardware to do, that program can do. It can read your files, check your email, print letter you wrote to your crush in Word but “deleted” because it was embarrassing, log every key you type, turn on your webcam, listen to the microphone, download explicit or illegal imagery, upload your hard drive to the NSA, disable your computer fans, etc

    You really only want to run this stuff if it’s from a trustworthy vendor and even then it’s completely defensible to object to running one of these programs.

    Currently these things have yet to be caught doing any of these things, but that’s because they haven’t been instructed to, not because they can’t.

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      I guess what I’m saying is if this information was being sent across a network, that would be detectable.

      • Dark ArcA
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        18 hours ago

        Sure, but by then it could be too late for the vast majority of people.

        It’s not super relevant if nobody is looking for it/it’s hard to detect even if you are and plenty of damage can be done prior to detection.