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Riot Games has released a new update for Valorant’s Vanguard anti-cheat system aimed at stopping advanced DMA (Direct Memory Access) cheating hardware. Vanguard anticheat now damages the firmware of these devices upon detection. It can be repaired, but bricking a person's hardware without their consent or knowledge is highly illegal The update targets certain SATA and NVMe firmware setups commonly used in expensive DMA cheating devices. These cheats rely on external hardware to read game memory while bypassing traditional anti-cheat detection methods. Some users claim Vanguard now triggers IOMMU-related warnings that can temporarily block affected hardware until system settings or firmware are updated. These DMA cheats have become popular in competitive games because they bypass many kernel-level anti-cheat systems. Riot has worked with motherboard manufacturers including ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, and ASRock to address firmware vulnerabilities related to DMA access.