Hacker Tricked Call of Duty Anti-Cheat System into Banning Thousands of Players

A hacker by the name of Vizor figured out a way to get Call of Duty players banned by tricking the Ricochet anti-cheat system. Activision fixed the problem but understated it, according to a TechCrunch report. 

The gaming industry, especially when it comes to online games, is fraught with cheaters. The problem is so big that it spawned a parallel industry developing cheating solutions designed for all successful online titles. 

Gamers are extremely competitive, and some try to use cheats. Companies know this and are always looking for new ways to detect them. It’s a contest of whack-a-mole that has no end in sight. 

But there’s a different category of people out there who enjoy causing problems. In this case, the hacker, Vizor, figured out a way to trigger bans for other players, even if they were playing honestly, according to a TechCrunch report. 

Call of Duty uses a kernel-level anti-cheat system called Ricochet, which constantly scans the user’s RAM. Vizor discovered that the anti-cheat solution was actively looking for particular strings, such as ‘Trigger Bot.’ When it found something like this, it would assume the player was cheating and banned him. 

It turns out that it was possible to trick Ricochet into banning people, even when they weren’t cheating. Vizor would send messages to people using the in-game tools in a way that would encompass triggers that Ricochet would read. 

The hacker said his methods affected many thousands of players. 

“I could have done this for years and as long as I target random players and no one famous it would have gone without notice. It was funny to exploit,” said the hacker.

This new information came to light after Activision announced a month ago that it fixed a problem with Ricochet affecting a small number of players. 

“RICOCHET Anti-Cheat identified and disabled a workaround to a detection system in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone that impacted a small number of legitimate player accounts. We have restored all accounts that were impacted. An examination of our systems was conducted for safety and monitoring will continue,” said the Call of Duty developers on X.