Does Easy Anti-Cheat scan your PC?

In the opening paragraphs, a quick answer to the main question is that yes, Easy Anti-Cheat does scan your PC when it is running. The goal of Easy Anti-Cheat is to detect and prevent cheating in online multiplayer games that use the software. To accomplish this, Easy Anti-Cheat needs to monitor and analyze files and processes on a user’s system to check for cheat programs or injected code.

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What is Easy Anti-Cheat?

Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) is an anti-cheating software designed to prevent cheating and hacking in online multiplayer games. It was developed and is maintained by Epic Games. EAC runs as a system process alongside the game client and monitors for suspicious activity or programs that could give players unfair advantages.

Some of the main features of Easy Anti-Cheat include:

Scanning system memory and open processes for hacks, cheats or injected code
Blocking the execution of unauthorized third-party software
Comparing checksums of key game files against known good copies to detect manipulation or hacking

Monitoring and analyzing game statistics to detect anomalous behavior
Integrating with game clients to enable in-game reporting of suspected cheaters

EAC is currently used by various popular online games including Apex Legends, Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Rust and Rainbow Six Siege. Game developers integrate it into their titles to help maintain fair and competitive multiplayer environments.

What does Easy Anti-Cheat scan for?

When enabled alongside a game client, Easy Anti-Cheat performs various system scans and monitoring to check for cheating software or exploits. Some of the key things it looks for include:

Injections or modifications to game memory: EAC scans system memory allocated to the game client for any unauthorized code injections which could give cheaters unfair advantages.
Cheat program executables: It checks open processes and scanned memory regions for known cheat program executables. Signature detection helps identify and block known cheating tools.

DLL injections: Code injections via dynamic link library (DLL) hijacking is a common cheating technique. EAC monitors for anomalous DLLs loaded into game processes.
Driver manipulations: Malicious kernel-level drivers could be used to read or write to protected game memory. EAC watches for suspicious driver activity.
File manipulations: Verifying checksums of key game files helps detect whether they have been modified or hacked in ways that could enable cheating.

Registry edits: Illicit registry edits can be used to gain unfair advantages. EAC monitors registry changes while active.

In essence, Easy Anti-Cheat aims to detect any unauthorized changes to game clients, memory, files or system settings that could affect multiplayer fairness and give certain players advantage by cheating.

What system access does Easy Anti-Cheat need?

For Easy Anti-Cheat to perform its various scanning and monitoring capabilities, it requires elevated system access. This includes:

Kernel-level driver installation: EAC loads an anti-cheat driver service that runs at the kernel level. This allows low-level system access.
Read/write access to game processes: Monitoring and verifying game process memory requires access rights from the OS.
Ability to scan system memory and processes: Searching for cheat executables or injected code needs sufficient rights to scan through active memory regions.

Filesystem monitoring capabilities: To detect game file manipulation, EAC must be able to monitor and verify files and folders.
Registry access: Monitoring changes to the Windows registry requires registry read/write permissions.

Granting these elevated operating system permissions to Easy Anti-Cheat essentially allows it to access protected system areas, inspect confidential processes and make its own low-level changes. This broad access is required for its cheating detection capabilities.

Does Easy Anti-Cheat scan your entire computer?

Easy Anti-Cheat does not explicitly perform complete hard drive scans or sweep your entire file system. Instead, its scanning is limited to active processes, memory, registry and specific game folders while gameplay is occurring.

However, there are some caveats to this:

Kernel-level drivers could technically have access to files on mounted drives, though EAC indicates it does not use this capability.

EAC does verify game file checksums, implying it has access to those game directories and their contents.
Memory scans could capture traces of other applications running concurrently alongside the game client.
EAC makes no claim about discarding or protecting any incidental system data it encounters during scanning.

So in summary, while not performing explicit full-system scans, the access EAC requires for normal operation means some user files and data outside of game directories could be observed or captured as a byproduct of its scanning. Users must make their own privacy risk assessment.

Does Easy Anti-Cheat collect any user data?

According to the , the program does collect some limited user data to operate and identify cheaters, including:

Hardware identifiers like computer UUIDs and hardware component IDs

Connected peripheral IDs and details
Game account IDs (like Steam ID)
In-game nickname

Game statistics like scores, rankings, weapon usage etc.

EAC states that any user data collected is processed solely for cheating detection purposes and is not shared with third parties for any other reason.

However, the extensive kernel-level access means activities outside of gameplay could inadvertently have some data exposure. Users concerned about privacy may want to investigate and limit any extraneous applications running concurrently while EAC is enabled.

Can Easy Anti-Cheat be completely uninstalled?

Fully removing Easy Anti-Cheat requires uninstalling the user-mode program components and removing the kernel driver from the system.

To uninstall:

Use the Windows Control Panel -> Programs -> Uninstall a program to remove the Easy Anti-Cheat user application.

Open Windows Command Prompt as Administrator and run the command “sc delete EOAC” to remove the EOACAntiCheat driver service.

Reboot the computer to complete the driver removal.

Optionally, use a third party utility like Display Driver Uninstaller to scan for any leftover files.

These steps will remove all Easy Anti-Cheat program files, services and registry entries. However, this will also prevent any installed games relying on EAC from launching.

Does disabling Easy Anti-Cheat stop the system scanning?

Simply closing or exiting the Easy Anti-Cheat user application is not sufficient to fully stop it from operating. This is because the kernel-level driver component will still be active.

To truly disable EAC scanning and access capabilities, the EOACAntiCheat driver must be stopped and disabled. This can be done using these steps:

Open Windows Command Prompt as Administrator.
Run the command “sc stop EOAC” to stop the driver.
Run “sc config EOAC start=disabled” to set the service startup type to disabled.

Reboot the computer for the changes to take effect.

With the driver disabled, EAC will no longer perform system scanning or have elevated access privileges until the driver is re-enabled.

Does Easy Anti-Cheat run all the time?

Easy Anti-Cheat only performs active scanning and monitoring while game clients using its protection are running.

So if you do not have any EAC-protected games open, the software is dormant and not using any system resources or actively scanning in the background.

However, the EAC driver does load at system startup and remains active in memory awaiting game client execution. So technically EAC is running all the time once installed, but is not actively scanning or monitoring until explicitly invoked by a game.

Closing affected games will stop EAC scanning entirely until it is started again. But fully stopping background operation requires manually disabling the driver service as described in the previous section.

Can third party anti-virus detect Easy Anti-Cheat?

Because Easy Anti-Cheat makes low-level changes and requires elevated system access just like malware, some third party anti-virus and firewall programs may flag or block EAC files, processes or network activity.

Known conflicts include:

Kaspersky – Flags the EAC driver as hacktool.Win32.EAC.a

Avast – Detects EAC files as Win32:Malware-gen
AVG – Flags EAC as Trojan horse agent
Bitdefender – Blocks EAC driver installation

If encountering detections with mainstream anti-virus tools, it is recommended to:

Add game and EAC folders to AV exclusion lists
Disable certain protection features like behavioral analysis or web filtering

Add specific exceptions for EAC executables and the driver service

This will prevent interference with Easy Anti-Cheat functionality while keeping other system protections active.

Does EAC have any known vulnerabilities?

Like any software, security experts have identified some potential weaknesses and bugs in various versions of Easy Anti-Cheat over time. Some examples include:

Local privilege escalation: Flaws allowing EAC privileges to be abused to execute code as SYSTEM.
Arbitrary memory overwrites: Could enable remote code execution or elevation of privileges.
DLL hijacking: Weaknesses in game clients that could let unauthorized DLLs load into process.

Driver vulnerabilities: Various memory corruption bugs identified in the EOACAntiCheat driver.

However, Epic indicates most major security issues have been addressed in newer EAC builds. Users should ensure they are running the latest game and anti-cheat versions. Enabling auto-updates is recommended for security patches.

Does Easy Anti-Cheat increase gaming performance?

There is little evidence that Easy Anti-Cheat directly improves game performance or FPS for most users. This is because the performance overhead of background scanning is usually marginal for modern hardware.

However, EAC can indirectly improve gaming performance in some cases by:

Preventing cheaters using speedhacks or lag switches from degrading multiplayer server performance.
Blocking cryptojacking malware hidden in cheat tools from sapping system resources.

Stopping badly coded or buggy cheat programs from interfering with clients.

So while EAC itself has minimal impact, reducing cheating can tangibly improve multiplayer gameplay experience. The anti-cheat capabilities are more important than any marginal performance gain or loss.

Does having Easy Anti-Cheat make gaming safer?

Installing Easy Anti-Cheat does marginally increase the attack surface from both a code security and privacy standpoint. However, the threat is likely overstated compared to the benefits.

Gaming is safer with EAC because it:

Actively blocks known cheating tools and exploits from compromising game clients.
Prevents unfair player advantages from compromised game state or data.

StopsSpread of some trojaned cheat tools that infect systems.
Bans policy violating accounts to discourage cheating behavior.

While minor vulnerabilities have been found, Easy Anti-Cheat has a dedicated security team that rapidly addresses issues. This makes it more reliable than arbitrarily coded cheating software.

Overall, the anti-cheating protection for multiplayer fairness outweighs the small additional risks.

Conclusion

Easy Anti-Cheat does actively scan your computer when enabled, analyzing memory, processes, registry and files to detect cheating software and prevent unfair play. This level of system access raises some security and privacy concerns for certain users.

However, EAC is designed to only operate while game clients are active, limiting unnecessary background activity. Disabling or uninstalling the program removes scanning capabilities and kernel-level access when not gaming.

For competitive multiplayer gamers, the benefits of blocking cheaters and maintaining fair gameplay typically outweighs potential downsides from the anti-cheat scanning. But users can make their own evaluation based on privacy priorities.