What is a DMA Cheat?
A DMA (Direct Memory Access) cheat is a hardware-based video-game cheat that reads the gaming PC's RAM through a PCIe expansion card installed in a second computer. The two PCs are connected by a fiber optic link (typically USB-C to a Squirrel firmware FPGA card), and the second PC processes game memory to render ESP, drive aimbot input, and operate radar — entirely outside the gaming PC's operating system. DMA cheats avoid software anti-cheats because no cheat code runs on the gaming PC.
DMA cheats are the architectural pinnacle of the modern cheat industry. Where every other cheat lives inside the gaming PC and has to evade anti-cheat scanning, a DMA cheat physically reads the gaming PC's memory from a separate computer via a PCIe card. There is no cheat process running on the gaming PC for the anti-cheat to find, no cheat driver loaded on the gaming PC's kernel, no rendering hook in the gaming PC's GPU pipeline. From the gaming PC's perspective, the only thing changed is that some PCIe device with a benign-looking device ID is enumerated.
How a DMA cheat works
The hardware stack is consistent across vendors. A DMA card (typically a Squirrel-firmware FPGA on a Xilinx Artix-7 or Spartan-7 chip, with the LeechCore/PCILeech driver running on the host side) is installed in a PCIe slot on the gaming PC. The card's PCIe DMA engine can read arbitrary physical memory addresses on the gaming PC. The card is connected via fiber optic or USB-C to a second PC. Software on the second PC — usually a closed-source loader bundling LeechCore plus the vendor's game-specific module — issues memory reads to the DMA card and processes the results. The second PC renders ESP and radar to a second monitor (or back to the gaming monitor via a capture-card and HDMI mixer), and drives mouse/keyboard input back into the gaming PC via a Kmbox or Arduino-based HID emulator. The full cycle reads enemy positions, processes them, and sends mouse input back, all without any cheat code running on the gaming PC.
Hardware required
- DMA card — Squirrel FPGA card (~$300-700 depending on vendor and firmware)
- Fiber optic cable / USB-C cable — connects DMA card to second PC
- Second PC — runs LeechCore + vendor loader; can be modest hardware
- HID input device — Kmbox B+ or equivalent ($150-300) for mouse/keyboard input emulation
- Capture card (optional) — for single-monitor setups, captures gaming PC video and mixes in ESP
Full DMA rigs typically run $1,200 to $1,800 all-in. Vendor software subscriptions cost an additional $50-200 monthly.
Why DMA cheats existed
DMA cheats grew from a research lineage that started with PCILeech (a forensics tool for reading physical memory of locked computers, by Ulf Frisk) and matured into a gaming cheat ecosystem by 2020-2022. The architectural promise was that no software anti-cheat could detect a DMA cheat because no cheat code runs on the gaming PC. For 3-4 years that was approximately true — DMA users in Tarkov, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty Warzone enjoyed effective software-anti-cheat immunity.
How anti-cheats detect DMA
Three detection lanes opened up. First, PCIe device enumeration scanning — anti-cheats walk the PCIe bus looking for device IDs associated with FPGA cards or "weird" PCIe configurations (unusual BAR sizes, oversized DMA windows). Vendors mitigated this by firmware-spoofing benign device IDs (presenting as a Realtek NIC or other innocuous device). Second, behavioral analysis — DMA cheats still require player input via Kmbox or similar, and the input statistics give cheaters away under ML review. Third, the IOMMU mandate. Fortnite's February 2026 IOMMU rule and PUBG's 2026 roadmap targeting DMA cheats both require Intel VT-d / AMD-Vi to be enabled, which restricts which physical memory regions a PCIe device can access. With IOMMU on, a DMA card can no longer read arbitrary memory.
2026 detection landscape
The DMA market is dying in 2026. Fortnite's IOMMU mandate gutted the Fortnite DMA segment overnight. PUBG, Apex Legends, and other major titles are following. New device-ID spoofing firmware extends life but each round of detection burns specific firmware versions. For comprehensive context see what is the future of DMA cheating and why was DMA killed by the IOMMU mandate. RawCheats does not sell DMA hardware; our products are software-only, paired with the HWID spoofer pillar.
Related Pages
Sources
- PCILeech Research — Ulf Frisk
- About Easy Anti-Cheat — Epic Games
- Intel VT-d Virtualization — Intel
Related Questions
Software cheats by a clear margin in 2026. Fortnite's February 2026 IOMMU mandate effectively killed DMA on the world's largest cheating target — Epic now enforces VT-d/AMD-Vi on Windows 11 24H2+, breaking the kernel memory window DMA cards depend on. Software cheats run $20-40/month with no hardware cost. DMA hardware runs $500-1,500 upfront plus monthly firmware subscriptions, and the technology is now defeated on the largest game in the segment. For 2026, software is the structurally correct choice.
DMA (Direct Memory Access) cheating uses an FPGA-based PCIe card (Xilinx Spartan-6, Artix-7, Kintex-7) plugged into a secondary "victim" PC to read game memory directly via bus-master DMA, while a "host" PC processes the data and displays cheats. The game PC sees no cheat software locally because the cheating runs on a separate machine. IOMMU enforcement in 2026 (Fortnite Feb 19 mandate, Vanguard, BattlEye titles) killed the cheap DMA market by blocking unauthorized device-to-memory reads.
IOMMU (Input-Output Memory Management Unit) is a CPU hardware feature — Intel VT-d, AMD-Vi — that creates per-device virtual address spaces for PCIe devices. With IOMMU enabled, a PCIe device can only read physical memory that the OS has explicitly mapped into its IOMMU page tables. This is what kills naive DMA cheats: an FPGA card can no longer freely read game memory because the IOMMU blocks it. Fortnite mandated IOMMU on Feb 19, 2026, joining Vanguard, BattlEye, and EAC titles.
The DMA cheating segment is contracting in 2026 and the trajectory is terminal for the dominant 2020-2024 architecture. Fortnite''s February 2026 IOMMU mandate ended Fortnite DMA viability. PUBG''s 2026 anti-cheat roadmap names DMA enforcement as priority one. Other AAA titles are following. New device-ID spoofing firmware extends DMA usability in the short term but each detection round burns specific firmware versions. By 2028, DMA cheats will be marginal in AAA shooters and primarily a niche tool for non-IOMMU games.
DMA cheating relied on FPGA cards having unrestricted bus-master access to all of physical memory. IOMMU enforcement creates per-device address spaces — the FPGA can only read memory the OS has explicitly mapped to it, which is none of the game's memory. With IOMMU on, the FPGA's DMA reads return zeros. The mainstream DMA market built around $200-500 Spartan-6 cards collapsed when Vanguard, Fortnite (Feb 19, 2026), BattlEye titles, and other AAA games made IOMMU enforcement mandatory.
