Epic Games presented a preliminary version of the new Epic Games Launcher, which implements the previously promised support for the Linux platform. The new version also has an updated design, reduced launch time, added built-in voice chat, offered a single page for managing the launch of games, the ability to place your own applications and games on the panel, expanded search and provided monitoring of the speed and activity of downloads.
In addition to this announced the preparation of a version of the online game Fortnite for Linux. As part of this project, the EAC (Easy Anti-Cheat) protection system for Linux distributions is being modernized and contacts are being established with maintainers to implement the capabilities necessary for anti-cheat systems in Linux. It is noted that the old implementation of EAC for Linux does not provide the proper level of anti-cheat protection, which is why many game developers do not add support for Linux. In the new edition of EAC, instead of its own kernel module, the standard security mechanisms provided by the Linux kernel are used, and the anti-cheat itself runs as a systemd service.
Among the requirements that must be met in distributions to use EAC:
- Loading in Secure Boot mode the kernel, drivers and kernel modules signed with approved keys. The proper level of verified boot is already provided in Ubuntu, Fedora, Bazzite, Bluefin, Debian, openSUSE, SUSE, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.
- Activate TPM 2.0 in the BIOS to create a verifiable boot log.
- The use of bootloaders such as systemd-boot and GRUB that support measured boot mode, which allows you to confirm the validity of the configuration and boot components.
- Activation of IOMMU technology in the BIOS and kernel, which prevents cheating hardware devices from accessing the game memory.
- Enabling the Lockdown mode in the kernel, which limits root user access to the kernel and blocks UEFI Secure Boot bypass paths (access to /dev/mem, /dev/kmem, /dev/port, /proc/kcore, debugfs, kprobes debug mode, mmiotrace, tracefs, BPF, PCMCIA CIS (Card Information Structure), some ACPI interfaces and MSR registers of the CPU, calls to kexec_file and kexec_load are blocked, hibernation is prohibited, the use of DMA for PCI devices is limited, import of ACPI code from EFI variables is prohibited, manipulations with I/O ports are not allowed).
- Disabling the Kexec mechanism in the kernel, used to launch a new kernel from an old one without completely rebooting the system.
- Support for LSM hooks (Linux Security Module) in BPF for connecting eBPF programs that control access and monitor the operation of processes (to block reading and modification of game memory, as well as check the activity of the anti-cheat system).