Cheats Spoofer

Spoofer is your personal HWID protector

Preview Zone

Hover over any of the cheats in the column on the left

Introduction

Online games have long been a battleground between cheat developers and anti-cheat systems. One of the strongest measures an anti-cheat can take is a hardware ban – banning a unique hardware identifier (HWID) of a PC so the cheater can’t simply make a new account. In response, cheat makers created HWID spoofers to bypass these hardware bans. An HWID spoofer is software that alters or masks the hardware signatures of a PC, tricking games into seeing a different machine. This article dives into the technical side of HWID spoofers: how they work, the methods they use (from kernel drivers to firmware tricks), how modern anti-cheats like Vanguard, BattlEye, and Easy Anti-Cheat detect them, and how spoofers evolve in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game. We’ll also cover the risks of using spoofers – from system damage to malware – and how spoofers relate to cheat loaders. The goal is an expert-level breakdown that remains accessible to gamers interested in the nuts and bolts of this technology.

What Are Hardware Bans and HWIDs?

Before understanding spoofers, it’s important to know how hardware ID bans work. When a game enforces a hardware ban, it isn’t just banning your account – it’s banning the device itself. Games and their anti-cheat systems gather unique identifiers from your PC’s components (often collectively called the HWID) to fingerprint your machine. These hardware identifiers can include:

Motherboard IDs and BIOS/UEFI data: e.g. the motherboard serial number, BIOS version or serial, system UUID, etc.
CPU and hardware signatures: information about the CPU (and sometimes GPU) that can uniquely identify it (modern CPUs don’t have easily accessible unique serials, but overall hardware profiles contribute to HWID).
Storage device serials: the unique serial numbers of your SSDs/HDDs and even volume IDs of disk partitions.
Network adapter MAC addresses: the Media Access Control address of your network card (Ethernet or Wi-Fi), which is unique to the device.
Other identifiers: in some cases, other components like RAM or peripheral serials, or even the system’s GUID in the OS registry, might be used to enrich the fingerprint. Modern anti-cheats may even leverage the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), using its unique Endorsement Key as a hardware identifier.

Using a combination of these, an anti-cheat generates a fingerprint for your PC. If a player is caught egregiously violating the rules (for example, using cheats in a competitive game), the anti-cheat can issue a hardware ban, logging that HWID as barred. From that point on, any account that tries to play from the banned machine gets blocked immediately. Even new accounts won’t work because the system recognizes the hardware. This makes HWID bans far more severe than normal account bans – it’s effectively a statement that this particular PC (and by extension, person) is not welcome. Games like Fortnite and Call of Duty are known to issue HWID bans in their fight against cheaters, as do others like Valorant (Vanguard anti-cheat), Apex Legends (Easy Anti-Cheat), and PUBG (BattlEye), especially for repeat offenders.

For game developers, hardware bans are a last line of defense meant to be hard to evade. In theory, the only way around a HWID ban is to change out your hardware (new motherboard, new drive, etc.) or wait for the ban to be lifted (if it ever is). In practice, this gave rise to HWID spoofers – tools that change those hardware identifiers via software, so that a banned PC appears as a different, clean device. As one industry blog noted, the availability of spoofers can turn the anti-cheat’s victory hollow – caught cheaters just buy a new account and keep playing with a spoofed HWID.

Types of HWID Spoofers: Temporary vs Permanent

Not all spoofers work the same way. Broadly, there are two types of HWID spoofing approaches: temporary spoofers and permanent spoofers (HWID changers).

Temporary Spoofers: These are the most common. A temporary spoofer alters hardware identifiers only until the system is rebooted (or until the spoofer is turned off). The changes reside in memory or in temporary OS settings, and your original HWID is restored on restart. Cheat providers often favor temporary spoofers because they are safer – they don’t persistently mess with firmware or OS beyond the session. For example, the EngineOwning cheat platform integrates a spoofer that stays active only while the cheat loader is running; the user just ticks a checkbox to spoof, and the spoof reverts after a reboot or when they un-check it. Temporary spoofers are sometimes built into cheat loaders (more on that later) for on-demand protection. Since they aren’t making irreversible changes, a well-designed temporary spoofer “won’t damage your computer” and is easily toggled.
Permanent Spoofers (HWID Changers): These tools make lasting changes to your system’s identifiers that remain even after reboot. They might modify firmware data or other persistent settings to essentially give your machine a new identity until you explicitly change it back. Permanent spoofing is often called HWID changing because it’s akin to actually changing your hardware IDs, not just masking them temporarily. This can be effective for games with aggressive anti-cheats, but it comes with much higher risk. Users on cheat forums frequently warn that permanent HWID changers are “riskier” – there are many reports of broken motherboards, system instability and blue-screen crashes caused by them. In one case, a person who used a permanent spoofer found that it deactivated their Windows license and caused system errors that could only be fixed by a full OS reinstall. Essentially, these spoofers might dive so deep (e.g. rewriting BIOS info or OS keys) that they corrupt something critical. Because of these dangers, permanent spoofers are less popular and are recommended only for extreme cases – most cheat providers themselves note these can “break” your PC and will violate any warranty or support. Temporary spoofing is therefore preferred for a safer, if still illicit, solution.

In summary, a temporary HWID spoofer is like a disguise you put on whenever you launch the game – it’s convenient and low-risk, but if you forget to wear it (or it gets detected), your real identity is revealed. A permanent spoofer is like plastic surgery for your PC – harder to do and potentially damaging, but it means your machine truly has a new identity (at least until anti-cheat finds a new identifier that wasn’t changed).

How HWID Spoofers Work – What Do They Change?

HWID spoofers operate by altering the values that games and anti-cheat software use to identify hardware. Practically, this means modifying or masking a variety of system and firmware data. Common hardware values and identifiers that spoofers target include:

SMBIOS Data: The System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) contains information about the system’s hardware, such as the system manufacturer, product name, version, and serial numbers for the system board and chassis. Many spoofers patch these values (often through ACPI or low-level calls) to either randomize them or set them to generic strings. For instance, a spoofer might change the motherboard serial number and the system UUID that the BIOS reports. By zeroing out or altering SMBIOS serials, the HWID fingerprint derived from them is changed. (One advanced spoofer, appropriately named “Rainbow,” actually hooks into the Windows boot process via an EFI module to zero out SMBIOS serials very early in boot – more on such techniques later.)
BIOS/UEFI Identifiers: Beyond SMBIOS, spoofers may modify BIOS identifiers like the BIOS version, BIOS serial number, or UEFI firmware details. Some anti-cheats read UEFI data or check if Secure Boot is enabled, etc. Spoofers can load at boot to tamper with these. For example, if a game ban system flags a PC’s UEFI firmware or Secure Boot status, a spoofer might hook into EFI runtime services to report false values (one proof-of-concept spoofer did exactly this to pretend Secure Boot was enabled when it wasn’t). By patching such firmware interfaces, the spoofer ensures the anti-cheat sees the “clean” expected state.
Disk Drive Serials and Volume IDs: Each storage device (HDD/SSD) has a unique hardware serial number (accessible via ATA/SCSI queries), and each disk volume/partition has a volume ID. Anti-cheats often collect these because drives are easy unique identifiers. Spoofers can intercept calls that retrieve drive serials and return spoofed numbers. Alternatively, some software-based spoofers simply change the Volume ID of the system drive (which is a slightly higher-level identifier) – this can be done via OS calls or small utilities and might fool simplistic checks. More sophisticated ones operate at the driver level: for example, a boot-level spoofer might swap out the disk I/O routines so that any request for the disk’s serial number errors out or returns a fake value. By doing so in kernel space, the spoofer ensures even a kernel-level anti-cheat can’t easily get the real serial. In practice, cheaters have also used tricks like setting up a RAID array or using an external drive to alter how disk information appears to the system, which can change identifiers and avoid certain disk-based bans (leading to talk of “RAID0 bans” and spoofers that handle them).
Network MAC Addresses: The MAC address is a unique ID assigned to network adapters. Changing a MAC address is a well-known tactic (it’s even commonly done for privacy). Spoofers will randomize or let the user set a new MAC for one’s Ethernet/Wi-Fi. This can be done either by editing the Windows registry/driver settings for the NIC (many network drivers allow MAC override) or by temporarily injecting a filter driver. Even simpler, some users just buy a new network card or use a VPN with a virtual adapter. Since MAC is often part of the HWID, a spoofer typically handles this with one click. It’s worth noting that anti-cheats that operate at the kernel level could detect if the MAC address reported to the game differs from the burned-in address on the NIC (some anti-cheats query network interfaces at a low level). Thus, advanced spoofers try to cover all instances by changing what the system reports globally.
OS and Software GUIDs: Some games historically used the Windows installation identifiers (like the MachineGuid stored in the registry, or the product ID) as part of their HWID fingerprint. Spoofers may therefore edit registry keys such as HKLM \\ Software \\ Microsoft \\ Cryptography \\ MachineGuid to a new random GUID, and likewise other identifiers like the Installation ID. However, modern anti-cheats rely more on hardware-firmware IDs than these software GUIDs (since those can be changed easily or might duplicate on cloned systems). Still, a thorough spoofer often includes registry edits for completeness.
TPM and Other Firmware IDs: As anti-cheats have evolved, some now leverage the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) as a source of device identity, since a TPM’s Endorsement Key is unique to the motherboard and is supposed to be tamper-resistant. For instance, there are reports that contemporary anti-cheat solutions started checking TPM data as a hard-to-spoof HWID flag. In response, cheat developers have created TPM spoofers: kernel drivers that hook into Windows’ TPM driver stack and intercept the calls, feeding back a fake TPM ID. One such spoofer monitored requests to read the TPM’s EK and randomized it on-the-fly when the anti-cheat tried to access it. This is an arms race (discussed more later) – as anti-cheat moves to things like TPM that are meant to be secure, cheat devs move to subvert them at the software interface level.

In summary, an HWID spoofer works by editing the fingerprints your computer presents. It may alter serial numbers in the BIOS, substitute disk IDs, change MAC addresses, and so on. As one security blog puts it, a spoofer will “swap out those numbers” and even upload false information into system files, effectively tricking the game into thinking you’re on a different device. Most spoofers will cover multiple components at once (since games often use a combination). For example, a spoofer tool might, with one click, change your motherboard ID, disk ID, and MAC address all together. The result is that to the anti-cheat system, your PC’s HWID looks completely different after spoofing – it’s as if you bought a brand-new computer.

Spoofing Techniques: From Registry Hacks to Kernel Drivers and EFI Bootkits

How do spoofers actually implement these changes under the hood? The techniques range from relatively simple software tweaks to deeply technical low-level hacks:

User-Mode Methods and Registry Editing: Some basic spoofers operate in user mode (normal program level) and rely on OS-provided ways to change certain IDs. For instance, changing a NIC’s MAC address can be done by setting a registry key or using the adapter’s advanced properties in Windows – a spoofer utility might automate this. Changing the Volume ID of a drive can be done with admin privileges by calling an OS utility or direct disk API. Editing the MachineGuid or other registry-stored values also just needs admin rights. These methods are straightforward but limited: crucial identifiers like BIOS serials or physical drive serials cannot be changed purely from user-mode; they require either privileged drivers or will be easily detected if changed only superficially. Moreover, modern anti-cheat drivers running at the kernel can bypass user-mode lies – for example, if you only spoof a value in a registry key that the game uses, a kernel anti-cheat might fetch the real hardware info via a lower-level call. So user-mode only spoofers are usually effective against older or less sophisticated checks, but not against systems like BattlEye, EAC, or Vanguard which operate with kernel privileges. In short, registry tweaks might handle some of the HWID, but not all, and anti-cheats can often see around them. (This is why many cheap “spoofers” that just change registry info often fail against serious anti-cheats – they leave tell-tale inconsistencies.)
Kernel-Mode Drivers: The most effective spoofers run as or employ kernel drivers (Ring 0 code), the same level of privilege as the anti-cheat drivers. Running in kernel mode allows the spoofer to intercept system calls and interfaces that anti-cheat programs use to query hardware. For example, a kernel spoofer might hook the Windows API that retrieves SMBIOS information (so when the anti-cheat asks for the motherboard serial via that API, it gets a fake result). It can also filter device I/O requests: a common tactic is to hook the communication with the storage driver stack. The “Rainbow” EFI spoofer mentioned earlier effectively swapped the disk driver’s routine for getting a serial, pointing it to a piece of code that returns an errort. Other kernel spoofers patch in-memory data structures. For instance, Windows populates certain system information (like NtProductName, etc.) from BIOS at boot; a spoofer driver could overwrite those fields in memory after boot. Kernel drivers can also more convincingly impersonate hardware changes – e.g. by creating a phantom device or by telling the OS that a device has new identifiers. However, running a custom kernel driver is itself a challenge: Windows won’t load unsigned drivers by default (and obtaining a code-signing certificate for a cheat driver is not trivial, though some cheat makers have abused stolen or leaked certificates in the past). Many spoofers thus resort to driver exploits or known vulnerabilities to load their driver (for example, using an exploit like KDMapper technique to manually map an unsigned driver into the kernel, often via an exploited vulnerable driver). This is a cat-and-mouse in itself: anti-cheats will often detect and block known vulnerable drivers or unusual driver-loading patterns.
Boot-Level EFI/ACPI Tricks: The earlier in the boot process a spoofer runs, the more power it has to modify things before the anti-cheat even starts. Some sophisticated spoofers come in the form of bootkits or EFI drivers. These are loaded from a UEFI boot USB or as a replacement to the boot manager. By operating at boot, they can alter hardware info before Windows and the anti-cheat initialize. For example, an EFI spoofer can intercept the BIOS data as it’s handed to the OS. The “Rainbow” EFI bootkit (a public proof-of-concept) demonstrates this by hooking the Windows bootloader to clear out SMBIOS serials and sabotage disk serial queries extremely early. Another example is an EFI runtime driver called “SecureFake” which was designed to fool anti-cheats that enforce Secure Boot – it hooks the EFI runtime service so that Windows and anti-cheat think Secure Boot is active, even if it’s not. Boot-level spoofers often require Secure Boot to be off (since secure boot prevents unauthorized bootloaders). Notably, in response to such tactics, some anti-cheats (Riot’s Vanguard for one) have started requiring Secure Boot (and even TPM) to be enabled as a condition to play, precisely to combat cheat bootkits. This move makes it harder for cheat developers to use low-level bootkits, though as noted, cheat devs have already found ways to spoof Secure Boot and TPM status in some cases.
Hardware-Firmware Modification: This is less common (since it’s complex and risky), but some “permanent” spoofing methods involve directly modifying hardware firmware. For instance, enthusiasts have used motherboard manufacturer tools or BIOS modding utilities to change the DMI information (system board serial, etc.) in the BIOS flash. There are also tools for certain SSDs to edit their firmware serial. These approaches blur the line between software and true hardware change. They are persistent (since you literally rewrite the hardware’s stored ID). However, they carry the highest risk – a bad flash can brick a component. Typically, only the most desperate (or experienced) cheaters go this route when no software spoofer is available for their situation. From the anti-cheat perspective, if a user goes this far, there’s not much software can do – it will truly appear as a different hardware. But few do this because of difficulty and danger.

Most commonly, modern HWID spoofers are kernel-mode programs that dynamically patch or intercept system calls to feed false hardware info to games. They often come packaged with cheats or as separate tools that you run before launching the game. Once active, the spoofer ensures that any query for the protected identifiers gets the spoofed value. For example, a spoofer might install a small driver that hooks disk enumeration; when Easy Anti-Cheat tries to enumerate storage devices and read their serials, it either gets dummy serials or none at all. Similarly, the spoofer might hook Windows registry queries for hardware info, WMI queries, or low-level kernel routines. This requires deep technical work – especially because the anti-cheat is itself running in the kernel and watching for unauthorized modifications. It truly becomes a game of one-upmanship in system internals.

To illustrate, consider what one GitHub discussion described: “An HWID spoofer works by altering or masking your device’s original hardware identifiers, so that the game or anti-cheat system sees a ‘brand new’ machine”. In practice, that could mean using a kernel driver to intercept calls to NtQuerySystemInformation (which might retrieve BIOS data) or hooking the IRP_MJ_DEVICE_CONTROL for a storage driver to fake the response to a “get serial” command. The complexity of such tasks is why many spoofers are sold as paid software – they require constant updates and kernel-level development.

Anti-Cheat Detection: How Vanguard, EAC, and Others Fight Spoofers

Anti-cheat developers are well aware of HWID spoofers and have been adapting their strategies to detect or block them. Modern anti-cheat systems like BattlEye, Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), Riot Vanguard, and Activision’s Ricochet employ a variety of techniques to counter spoofers:

Driver Scanning and Analysis: Anti-cheats running in kernel mode often scan the system for unknown or suspicious drivers. A custom spoofer driver that isn’t part of the normal OS or known legitimate software can raise a red flag. Anti-cheat software can enumerate loaded drivers and check their signatures or known hashes. If a driver is found that matches a known cheat/spoofer signature, that’s immediate grounds for a ban. Even if not known, an unsigned driver present in kernel (or a known vulnerable driver that is commonly used to facilitate cheats) can be cause for suspicion. Anti-cheats have been known to block loading of certain drivers outright when the game starts, to prevent common spoofer injection methods. This “driver analysis” approach is one of the primary detection methods – the anti-cheat basically plays antivirus, looking for the footprints of cheat drivers in memory.
Integrity and Consistency Checks: Anti-cheat systems perform sanity checks on hardware data. For example, if a certain system call is supposed to return a valid hardware serial and it comes back blank or with obviously fake default data (like “FFFFFFFF” or all zeros, which some primitive spoofers might use), the anti-cheat can flag that as tampering. Consistency checks also involve gathering the same information via multiple ways. An anti-cheat might retrieve the disk serial via a Windows API and directly via a lower-level method – if a spoofer only hooked one of those code paths, the two results won’t match. Such discrepancies can indicate a spoofer is active. Vanguard’s kernel driver, for instance, could directly query hardware through ACPI or read certain Model Specific Registers that a user-mode cheat can’t intercept. If an inconsistency is found (say, the BIOS serial reported to Windows is different from what’s in the ACPI table), it’s evidence of manipulation. According to one HWID spoofer guide, “anti-cheat programs sometimes catch spoofers by looking for weird changes in your hardware data”. This might include hardware info that changes too frequently or values that are out of expected bounds. Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye are known to log your PC’s hardware profile; if one day you login and the machine identifies as a completely different set of hardware (without a whole OS reinstall or something), that could trigger scrutiny as well.
Behavioral Analysis: Beyond direct technical detection, anti-cheats (and game security teams) also use behavioral signals. For example, if an account was banned and a new account shows up from the same IP but with a totally different HWID fingerprint shortly after, that pattern suggests a possible spoofer (or a new PC). Coupled with other behavior (like the player skill or cheating pattern being similar), they might investigate further. Behavioral analysis can also include how the game client behaves – a spoofer that isn’t perfectly coded might cause slight anomalies in how the game or system behaves (small timing differences, minor errors). Anti-cheat might monitor for these subtle signs. It’s harder to rely on this, but it can contribute to flags.
Manual and Server-Side Checks: In some cases, suspected spoofer usage is flagged for manual review by the anti-cheat team. The security team might look at the logs of hardware changes and decide if it looks like genuine hardware replacement or a spoofer. They might also analyze the submitted crash reports or other diagnostics from the client – a spoofer, especially a kernel one, might cause unusual crashes or leave traces in system logs. Some anti-cheat vendors employ heuristics that are not 100% automated to catch the more sophisticated spoofers that avoid easy detection.
TPM and Secure Boot Enforcement: As mentioned, one way to make HWID more “authentic” is to leverage hardware security features. Requiring TPM 2.0 means the game can use the TPM’s cryptographic identity as part of the HWID. Since the TPM is a secure chip, it’s not trivial to software-spoof its ID (though not impossible, as we saw). Requiring Secure Boot means the system won’t run unsigned boot code, thwarting many bootkit-style spoofers. Riot’s Vanguard made headlines by requiring both TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot to be enabled for Valorant. This has a dual purpose: it makes it harder for cheat drivers to hide (because with Secure Boot on, you can’t easily load unsigned drivers or UEFI mods), and it gives the anti-cheat a more reliable anchor for identity (TPM). Some publishers have indeed taken this route – “enforce stricter security standards” – because a TPM can act as a “hard to manipulate HWID”. The anti-cheat can essentially ask the TPM for a quote or read a persistent unique value from it. If spoofers can’t hook that, then no matter what they change in Windows, the TPM-based check will catch them. The downside is that cheat developers have started working around even this. As noted in an Intorqa briefing, cheat devs in forums quickly claimed they could hook TPM calls or even disable the TPM drivers in Windows to prevent anti-cheat from getting a valid read. In fact, the earlier example of a kernel driver intercepting TPM reads is proof-of-concept that TPM isn’t entirely foolproof. Nonetheless, using TPM/Secure Boot raises the technical bar significantly for spoofers.
Evolving Anti-Cheat Clients: Anti-cheats update frequently to patch holes that spoofers exploit. For example, if a spoofer was known to hook a particular API, the anti-cheat might start using a different method to retrieve that info (making the spoofer ineffective until it updates). Some anti-cheat systems may even employ a form of double checking where they fetch hardware info at multiple points in time (like game launch vs during gameplay) to see if it mysteriously changes – a sign that a spoofer might have turned on late. Vanguard is known to be quite aggressive and “proactive”, possibly even checking system integrity continuously. Anti-cheats like EAC and BattlEye also often scan for known cheat processes in memory; if a spoofer’s user-mode component isn’t well-hidden, it could be detected that way too.

Despite all these measures, detecting a well-crafted HWID spoofer can be non-trivial. Anti-cheat engineers acknowledge it’s a “never-ending” battle. A 2024 industry article noted that anti-cheat software is getting better at catching spoofers – using driver analysis, consistency checks, and other methods we described – but even when they do catch one, the war isn’t over. Why? Because typically the anti-cheat will ban the spoofed HWID and the current account, but not the original hardware (since it might not even know it). The cheater’s real PC remains unmarked. So the cheater can simply generate a new spoofed ID next time and evade the ban again. In other words, when a spoofer is detected, it often results in just banning an “alias” rather than the culprit’s true identity. The cat-and-mouse game continues: anti-cheat updates detection, cheat devs modify the spoofer to avoid that detection, and so on.

The Cat-and-Mouse Evolution: Spoofers vs. Anti-Cheats

The duel between spoofer developers and anti-cheat teams is very much an arms race. Over the years, we’ve seen an evolutionary pattern:

Basic Spoofers vs Basic Checks: Early HWID implementations by games might have been simplistic (maybe just reading one or two IDs like MAC and volume serial). Cheat makers responded with simple tools to change those values or flush them. This worked until anti-cheats got wise to it.
Anti-Cheats Expand HWID Gathering: Anti-cheat systems started collecting more data points – motherboard, drives, network, etc. – and moved their anti-cheat clients to kernel level (for example, BattlEye and EAC both are kernel drivers now, and Riot introduced Vanguard as a kernel anti-cheat from day one). This made it harder for purely user-mode spoofers to succeed. In response, spoofers also had to move to the kernel and use more complex methods (hooking drivers, etc.).
Anti-Cheat Integrity Measures: As anti-cheats improved, they introduced integrity checks and began to lock down the system (for instance, preventing unsigned drivers, detecting known cheat loaders). Vanguard’s introduction of mandatory Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 is a recent example of upping the defense. This forced cheat devs to get creative: developing EFI bootkits that could run even with Secure Boot off (hence cheat communities instructing players to disable Secure Boot in order to use certain cheats/spoofers), or finding ways to sign their drivers (sometimes illegally). We saw cheats experimenting with hypervisor-level hacks as well – running the game in a virtualized environment where the cheat controls the hypervisor (Ring -1) can potentially undermine an anti-cheat, but anti-cheats responded by blocking VMs and suspicious hypervisors. Microsoft’s Kernel Enclave (VBS) technologies are also being leveraged by anti-cheat (see Riot’s Vanguard leveraging virtualization-based security enclaves to protect its process), which again changes the landscape.
New Hardware Anchors (e.g. TPM) vs. Hooking Those Anchors: The adoption of TPM as a harder-to-fake identifier has led to the kind of escalation where cheat devs now write specialized hooks into the OS’s communication with that hardware. It’s a rare skill set (understanding the TPM driver stack and its “undocumented” interfaces), but it’s happening. The average cheat developer might not bother yet, but top-tier cheat providers are investing in such R&D to keep their products viable against the toughest anti-cheats.
Legal and Economic Tactics: Outside of pure tech, game companies also have started suing cheat and spoofer developers or sending cease-and-desist letters. This can sometimes slow cheat distribution more effectively than technical means. However, where there’s demand (angry banned players willing to pay), new spoofers pop up.

Throughout this evolution, one thing is clear: spoofers are constantly adapting. A 2025 guide on anti-cheats noted that “both types of spoofers are getting more complex” and it’s a never-ending chase. When anti-cheats enforce something like “Windows 11 with Secure Boot/TPM only” (to raise the bar for cheats), cheat devs find loopholes (like patching the boot process or the TPM readings). When anti-cheats do driver scans, cheat devs find new vulnerabilities to hide their drivers or even unload their driver before the anti-cheat can catch it (some spoofers load, do their job, and then remove their kernel driver to leave no trace, though anti-cheats might detect the side-effects). It’s an iterative process of measure vs countermeasure.

For example, consider Valorant’s Vanguard: It is highly restrictive, running from system startup and monitoring for any anomalous software. Cheat devs aiming to support Valorant have toyed with incredibly low-level approaches, such as Direct EFI bootkits, or even using dual-boot setups where they spoof in one OS and then switch to another to play. On the other side, games like Call of Duty Warzone introduced the Ricochet anti-cheat which also uses kernel drivers; cheat sellers like EngineOwning promptly offered an updated spoofer dedicated to bypassing Ricochet. Interestingly, EngineOwning’s spoofer explicitly does not support games protected by EAC, BattlEye, or Vanguard – likely because those systems would detect the spoofer – but it works for the Call of Duty series and similar. This shows that in some arenas the spoofers have an edge (or at least a working truce) whereas in others, anti-cheat is currently winning.

In the end, each side evolves: anti-cheat developers refine detection (e.g. doing “driver forensics” on the fly, implementing kernel enclave to protect functions from hooking, etc.), while spoofer developers refine their evasion (e.g. using return address checks to avoid hooking detection, timing attacks, or even machine learning to guess which areas anti-cheat checks – speculative, but not far-fetched as things escalate). It’s a deep technical war that most gamers aren’t even aware of, running under the hood of their games.

Risks and Downsides of Using HWID Spoofers

From a cheater’s perspective, an HWID spoofer might seem like a lifesaver – it lets them get back into the game after a ban. But there are significant risks and costs associated with using these tools:

System Instability and Damage: As noted earlier, especially with permanent spoofers, things can go very wrong. Messing with BIOS or low-level system settings can cause boot failures, crashes, or hardware malfunction. There are accounts of cheat users literally bricking their motherboards or corrupting their Windows installation by using a poorly made spoofer. Even temporary spoofers can cause BSODs (blue screen crashes) if they conflict with the system or if the anti-cheat catches the driver in the act. Recovering from such incidents can be time-consuming at best (needing to DDU drivers, repair Windows) or expensive at worst (hardware replacement). Losing your Windows activation is another side effect – since Windows ties its license to hardware, a spoofer that changes your HWID can make Windows think it’s on a new PC, thus deactivating your valid license. One Microsoft forum helper bluntly recommended a clean Windows reinstall as “the only hope of undoing what the HWID spoofer has done”.
Detection and Ban Escalation: If an anti-cheat detects that you are using a spoofer, your current account will almost certainly be banned. While, as discussed, your original HWID might not get immediately flagged, you’ve still lost accounts and progress. Moreover, getting caught means you’ve drawn the attention of the anti-cheat team. Repeated attempts to circumvent bans can lead to ban permanence – developers may refuse to ever unban you, and in games with manual review (like Riot’s approach to HWID bans for extreme cases) you could be blacklisted long-term. There’s also a possibility (depending on the game) that they ban any accounts that even log in from the spoofer-tainted system as a precaution, which could affect innocent accounts (say, siblings using the same PC). In short, playing whack-a-mole with spoofed identities is a ticking time bomb – eventually one might slip up and lose more accounts.
Malware and Security Risks: The sad truth of cheating is that not all providers are trustworthy. There have been numerous incidents of cheat or spoofer programs containing trojans, cryptocurrency miners, or backdoors. When you run a spoofer, you are often running an executable with the highest privileges on your system (kernel driver or at least admin-level). That is a golden opportunity for malware. Unscrupulous developers or impersonators can distribute “free spoofers” that steal your personal data or infect your PC. Even paid, “legit” cheat services have had breaches where their loader was compromised. Gamers attempting to use these tools might end up as victims of identity theft or have their system recruited into a botnet. Essentially, by choosing to run unverified low-level software, you compromise the security of your PC. It’s the ultimate irony: trying to evade a game ban could result in catching a real virus.
No Guarantees – Constant Maintenance: Even if a spoofer works today, tomorrow’s game update might render it obsolete or detected. Cheat users often have to wait for the spoofer to update after major patches. There’s also the inconvenience that some spoofers require certain BIOS settings (e.g. disabling Secure Boot or enabling test-signing mode in Windows) which leave your system less secure or unable to boot other software. Sometimes spoofers conflict with system updates (for example, a Windows update might restore some driver that nullifies the spoof, or the spoofer’s changes might block an update from applying). Using a spoofer can turn maintaining your gaming PC into a part-time job of its own – with a nonzero chance of breakdown.
Cost and Quality: Spoofers aren’t always cheap. They are often sold via subscription, similar to cheats. A user might be paying monthly not just for the cheat, but also for the spoofer service. And not all spoofers are equal – some are downright scams that don’t work but still take your money. Others might work for one game but not another, despite claims. The arms race nature means you’re always gambling that the devs behind your spoofer are quicker than the anti-cheat devs. This can drain money with no guarantee of lasting results. Meanwhile, the frustration and anxiety (will I get banned mid-match? will my spoofer glitch?) can degrade the gaming experience – ironic, since the supposed point of cheating was to have more fun (illicitly).

In short, using an HWID spoofer is a high-stakes game of its own. You risk your system’s integrity and your personal data, all to keep circumventing bans that, if you’re cheating continuously, will keep coming. The cat-and-mouse with anti-cheat means a constant risk of being a step behind and facing consequences. And as anti-cheats get more sophisticated (leveraging secure hardware, AI-driven detection, etc.), the window is narrowing for spoofers. The safest route, of course, is not getting hardware-banned in the first place – which, not coincidentally, aligns with not cheating at all.

Spoofers and Cheat Loaders: Two Sides of the Same Coin

HWID spoofers often go hand-in-hand with cheating tools. In many cases, the very people developing aimbots, wallhacks, and other game hacks are also developing (or bundling) HWID spoofers to protect their customers. This close relationship manifests in a few ways:

Integrated Spoofers in Cheat Loaders: Many premium cheat providers build spoofing functionality directly into their cheat loader software. For the end-user (the cheater), this makes it seamless – they run one program that both injects the cheat and spoofs the hardware. For example, EngineOwning’s loader includes a checkbox for their HWID spoofer; the user simply checks “Spoof HWID” before launching the cheat/game and the loader handles the rest. This integration ensures that anyone using the cheat is also hiding their hardware identity, which is a selling point (it helps avoid the dreaded scenario of getting your actual HWID blacklisted while cheating). Intorqa’s research noted that big cheat vendors offer spoofer as “just another upgrade” and that some are now bundling spoofers with the cheat itself as a package deal.
Subscriptions and Services: Spoofers are monetized similarly to cheats. You’ll find them sold on the same forums and websites that sell hacks, often with subscription tiers (e.g. weekly, monthly access) or lifetime licenses. The pricing is usually comparable to a cheat subscription. This indicates that the cheat industry views HWID spoofers as an equally valuable commodity as the cheats. In fact, a cheater with a hardware ban needs a spoofer more urgently than a new aimbot – so it’s an additional revenue stream. Some cheat providers advertise their spoofer as a separate product, while others include it for free if you buy their cheat. The strategy differs, but the relationship is symbiotic: cheats draw the ban, spoofers remove the ban (temporarily), so offering both makes for a complete “solution” for ban-evading play.
Specialist Spoofer Vendors: There are also standalone spoofer vendors who might not offer gameplay cheats, only the unban service. These often target multiple games and anti-cheats. They market themselves almost like security tools (with claims of privacy enhancement, etc., albeit disingenuous in context). They sometimes cater to users who claim to be falsely banned or who want “protection” while cheating. Some brands like HWIDGen or Sync have popped up focusing on spoofers. But by and large, the market and community overlap with cheat developers. As Intorqa notes, there are “hundreds of sellers” out there, from spoofer specialists to big cheat vendors, all part of the same underground ecosystem.
User Behavior: From a user perspective, many cheaters won’t go into battle without both their cheat and their spoofer running. It has become a common recommendation in cheat communities: if you’re going to cheat, use a spoofer from the start, so that if you do get banned, your real HWID isn’t burned. Cheats and spoofers are often discussed in tandem. For example, in a forum for a game like Rust or Apex, you’ll see users asking “Which spoofer should I use with Cheat X? Is it safe?” This shows that using a cheat alone is considered an unnecessary risk when spoofers are available. Cheat suite providers leverage this by ensuring their loader can do it all.
Combined Technical Tricks: Sometimes the cheat and spoofer functionalities even blend. A cheat might already be using a kernel driver for, say, accessing memory or bypassing anti-cheat. That same driver can have routines to spoof hardware info. Therefore, from a development standpoint, it’s efficient to package them together. Both require defeating anti-cheat protections, so a lot of the underpinning work (like getting a driver running, bypassing Secure Boot, etc.) serves dual purpose. A cheat loader that’s already injecting code into a game can also patch some system calls to hide itself as well as spoof HWID. Essentially, the cheat needs stealth, and the spoofer is an extension of that stealth to the hardware identity layer.

The relationship is so tight that fighting one often means fighting the other. Game companies know that to truly clamp down on cheats, they must also counter spoofers, because banning accounts alone doesn’t stop a determined cheater from coming back. This is why modern anti-cheat initiatives mention hardware bans and why things like TPM requirements (which target spoofers specifically) are introduced. From the cheat seller’s angle, offering a robust spoofer can be a competitive advantage – “our cheats come with an undetectable spoofer, so you won’t get HWID banned” is a strong selling point for them.

One real-world example: after Call of Duty’s anti-cheat started HWID banning Warzone hackers en masse, cheat forums were flooded with requests for working spoofers. EngineOwning (a notorious CoD cheat provider) responded by releasing their own HWID spoofer product for Warzone/CoD, integrated into their platform, advertising it as “hiding your hardware from anti-cheats” with a one-click solution. They made it clear it was non-permanent (to reassure users it wouldn’t wreck their system) and that it supported the major CoD titles using Ricochet anti-cheat. However, they also openly state it does not support games with EAC, BattlEye, or Vanguard – an implicit admission that those anti-cheats would detect their method. This illustrates how cheat providers navigate the landscape: support the games where they can stay ahead, and avoid promising anything for the tougher systems.

Real-World Use Cases and Examples

To put everything in context, let’s consider a few real-world scenarios involving HWID spoofers:

Battle Royale Ban Evasion: In games like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone, which are free-to-play and thus plagued by repeat cheaters, HWID bans are common. A player banned in Warzone for cheating might turn to a spoofer to get back in. They purchase a spoofer (or use one bundled with their cheat), generate new hardware IDs, and create a fresh game account. From the server’s perspective, a new PC just came online. Indeed, Fortnite and CoD are cited as games where HWID spoofers are heavily used. The cycle might repeat if they get caught again. Some notorious cheaters in these games have been banned dozens of times but keep returning by constantly changing their HWIDs. This cat-and-mouse contributed to Activision suing cheat makers – because technically, purely software solutions weren’t stopping the resurgence of banned players.
High-End Anti-Cheat Showdown (Valorant): Valorant’s Vanguard represents one of the strictest anti-cheat regimes. There were reports of players who tried using standard spoofers to bypass Valorant bans and failed – Vanguard would either detect the spoofer driver or the fact that Secure Boot was off and block the game from running. In response, a small number of cheat developers created specialized spoofers for Valorant, which often require complex setup (for instance, booting from a USB stick to run a custom EFI program, then rebooting into Windows to play). These are examples of how far one has to go against a modern anti-cheat. Vanguard’s use of unique hardware identifiers (and possibly heuristics linking accounts to PCs) means casual spoofing isn’t enough. But still, by 2023-2024 there were working solutions involving things like EFI partition modifications or GPU driver trickery to avoid Vanguard’s gaze, illustrating that even the toughest anti-cheat has not completely eliminated spoofers – it just narrowed the field to the most technically adept adversaries.
False Ban Appeals vs Spoofers: There are cases of players who claim they were falsely HWID banned (e.g., due to a glitch or someone else’s actions) and who use a spoofer as a temporary fix to play while appealing the ban. One example is a player of a popular FPS who was HWID banned and, frustrated with support delays, resorted to an HWID changer to keep playing on new accounts. While this violates terms of service, it’s interesting because it’s a “legitimate” player using a tool typically associated with cheaters. It shows that the technology can appeal beyond just cheat users, though the vast majority of its use is indeed to abet cheating. Some spoofer vendors even advertise use-cases like “Unjust ban? Use our spoofer to get back in while you sort it out” – though one should take that marketing with a grain of salt (and game companies would still ban you for it if discovered).
Cheat Developer “Testing”: On the flip side, developers of cheats themselves often use spoofers during development. Creating cheats can trigger bans (since you have to test them against the anti-cheat), and a cheat dev doesn’t want their own dev machine perma-banned. So they use an HWID spoofer to sandbox their testing. This is a more niche use case but underscores that even in the cheat creation process, spoofers are an important tool.
Hardware Cheats and HWID: In 2023-2024, there was a rise in external hardware cheating devices (like DMA board hacks, Cronus/Zim input spoofers). Those operate differently (outside the PC), but interestingly, if someone got HWID banned while using those, they might still need a traditional HWID spoofer to get back because the hardware ban is tied to the PC, not the external device. Thus, even the users of “undetectable” hardware aids sometimes ended up in the same boat needing spoofers to evade bans.

The net effect of all these cases is that HWID spoofers have enabled a segment of banned players to continually cycle back into games, to the frustration of both developers and legitimate players. On forums for anti-cheat discussion, you’ll find suggestions like “Maybe we should move to hardware bans with no known spoofers or workarounds” – often met with replies pointing out that “actually you can spoof or even change your hardware ID and it’s been a thing for over a decade”. Indeed, the concept of impersonating new hardware isn’t new – it’s a constant in PC security cat-and-mouse (even outside gaming, think of malware trying to evade fingerprinting). It’s just become very visible in gaming because of how directly it undermines a major enforcement mechanism.

For game developers and anti-cheat companies, the fight continues. They rely on strategies like those mentioned in the Intorqa briefing: proactively obtaining popular spoofers to analyze how they work, then updating anti-cheat detection for those methods. They also pursue the sellers legally and try to cut off the marketing channels. The hope is that if they make it too expensive or risky for cheat makers to keep updating spoofers, the cycle will slow down. There have been successes – some cheat providers shut down, and some waves of bans stick longer when a spoofer is finally caught by an update. But as long as there is a demand (players willing to cheat and pay to get unbanned), new spoofers tend to emerge.

Conclusion

HWID spoofers represent a fascinating and troubling intersection of computer system engineering and the darker side of gaming. Technically, they delve into low-level PC operations – from OS internals to firmware – employing techniques that could be lessons in an advanced operating systems or cybersecurity course. Their goal, however, is to enable behavior that game developers consider destructive to fair play. We’ve seen how they work: by changing numerous hardware identifiers (BIOS, disk, MAC, etc.) either temporarily via kernel drivers or permanently via deeper modifications, thereby fooling games into thinking a banned PC is new. We’ve explored how anti-cheat systems detect them, using everything from driver scans to TPM-based checks, and how it’s an ever-evolving battle of wits between cheat devs and anti-cheat engineers. The risks of using spoofers are substantial – from crashing your PC to losing personal security – which serve as a cautionary tale that there really is no “safe” way to cheat the system.

In online gaming, cheating and ban evasion create an endless loop: anti-cheat bans the cheater’s account and device; cheater uses a spoofer to come back; anti-cheat updates; cheater updates the spoofer. This loop can only be broken if either the anti-cheat gets so advanced that spoofing becomes near impossible (not likely in absolute terms), or if external pressures (legal actions, community disapproval, etc.) reduce the prevalence of cheats and spoofers. Until then, HWID spoofers will remain a key tool in the cheat arsenal, and understanding them is key for those of us who want to build better defenses – or for the curious who want to know just how far some will go to play unfairly. In the end, it reinforces a classic notion in cybersecurity: for every measure, there’s a countermeasure, and knowledge is constantly pitted against knowledge in an endless game of cat and mouse.