DMA & Anti-Cheat Glossary
Plain-English definitions for the jargon you'll see across DMA hardware, FPGA firmware, and anti-cheat docs.
A
- Anti-cheat also "AC"
- Software bundled with a game to detect cheating. Most modern AAA anti-cheats run in kernel mode and inspect process memory, kernel callbacks, and PCIe device fingerprints. See BattlEye, EAC, Vanguard, RICOCHET.
B
- BAR Base Address Register
- A register in PCI config space that announces a memory or I/O region the device wants the system to allocate. Anti-cheats sometimes fingerprint BAR sizes and patterns.
- BattlEye
- A kernel-mode anti-cheat used by PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, Rust, and many others. Particularly thorough on PCIe enumeration and config-space writes. See DMA firmware for PUBG.
- BIN file
- The compiled FPGA bitstream that you flash to your DMA card. GhostIO emits a unique
.binper build.
C
- Config space
- A standardized 256-byte (or 4 KB extended) region a PCI device exposes for the OS to read identity and capability info. VID/PID/serial all live here.
D
- DMA Direct Memory Access
- A bus method where a peripheral reads or writes system RAM without going through the CPU. DMA cards exploit this to read game state from outside the OS.
- Donor
- A real device whose identity (VID/PID/class/etc.) is "donated" to a DMA firmware so it impersonates that device. GhostIO uses the Recon3D audio controller as its donor.
E
- EAC Easy Anti-Cheat
- A kernel-mode anti-cheat used by Fortnite, Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight, and many indie titles. See DMA firmware for Fortnite.
F
- FPGA Field-Programmable Gate Array
- Reconfigurable silicon. DMA cards use FPGAs (typically Xilinx 7-series) because the device's PCIe identity can be reprogrammed.
- FlashTool
- The Windows utility used to write a
.binto your DMA card. Has a known cosmetic bug where the progress bar stays at 0% during flash — the flash still succeeds. See how to flash DMA firmware.
H
- HWID Hardware ID
- A composite ID Windows computes from your motherboard, CPU, drives, and other hardware. Anti-cheats use it to issue hardware bans. The GhostIO Cleaner resets the components Windows uses to compute HWID.
J
- JTAG
- The IEEE 1149.1 debug/programming interface used to flash FPGA bitstreams. Every DMA card has a JTAG header.
K
- KMBox B Pro
- A USB hardware device that re-emits keyboard/mouse input through a microcontroller, making the input look like a regular USB peripheral to the gaming PC. Used together with DMA for full input-side stealth. See KMBox B Pro Fixer.
P
- PCIe PCI Express
- The high-speed serial bus that DMA cards plug into. PCIe cards announce their identity during enumeration — the bytes anti-cheats inspect.
R
- RICOCHET
- Activision's kernel-mode anti-cheat for Call of Duty. The most aggressive mainstream anti-cheat for DMA in 2026 — particularly thorough on PCIe enumeration. See DMA firmware for COD.
S
- Shadow config
- A copy of PCI config space stored in the FPGA's BRAM. The card responds to config-space reads from this shadow rather than from real registers, allowing identity to be patched per build.
- Squirrel 35T
- A popular DMA card based on the Xilinx
xc7a50tdie. Comes in PCIe (484-pin) and M.2 (325-pin) variants. See Captain 75T vs Squirrel 35T.
V
- Vanguard
- Riot Games' kernel-mode anti-cheat. Loads at boot via a kernel driver — even if the game isn't running.
- VID / PID Vendor ID / Product ID
- Two two-byte values a PCI device announces during enumeration to say "I'm vendor X, product Y." Anti-cheats use VID/PID as a primary fingerprint.
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