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Activision now requires COD PC players use Windows Secure Boot

Due to the amount of cheaters in cross-platform lobbies, Activision implemented kernel-level anti-cheat for Call of Duty on PC a few years ago. Now, the requirements are increasing once again, with Black Ops 6 to enforce Secure Boot for Windows systems. 

Secure Boot is a feature in Windows that aims to prevent malicious code from loading during start-up, and locks your system to only run ‘trusted software'. The system blocks rootkits and low-level exploits – most game cheats fall under the low-level exploits category.

Secure Boot will be required starting today for the season 5 launch of Black Ops 6, and will be a requirement for Black Ops 7 at launch. Actvision says that this change will make “cheating at a hardware level much more difficult”, but as always, nothing is impossible and eventually, there will be workarounds. It will be up to Activision's Ricochet anti-cheat developers to stay aware of emerging exploits to fix loopholes in the system.

In particular, this change looks to stamp out the use of cheats injected directly into peripheral memory, as well as devices like Zen.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: I'm not a fan of all of these increased security requirements just to play video games. We already gave them kernel-level access, and now we also need to lock our PCs down and limit software choices, just to play one game. 

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