Honkai: Star Rail

Honkai: Star Rail is HoYoversePublisherHoYoverse / miHoYomiHoYo (mainland China), publishing internationally as HoYoverse via Cognosphere, makes Genshin Impact and Honkai. Its kernel anti-cheat driver mhyprot2.sys became a landmark security case after ransomware crews abused the signed driver to disable antivirus.3 games in this family →'s free-to-play turn-based gacha RPG, developed by miHoYo and released April 26, 2023 on Windows, iOS, and Android, with a PlayStation 5 version later that year. Built on UnityEngineUnityUnity Technologies' engine powers a wide range of PC titles, from indie projects to large multiplayer games. In the competitive-shooter space, Escape from Tarkov is the notable Unity-based title.8 games in this family →, it runs through the HoYoPlay launcher and the Epic Games Store on PC. It became one of the highest-grossing gacha games, passing 100 million dollars on mobile within ten days of launch.

Installing Honkai: Star Rail means a HoYoverse kernel-mode anti-cheat on your system. The single most useful precaution is the one the 2024 incident points to: install only from the official HoYoPlay launcher, the Epic Games Store, or the platform store, because the documented ransomware risk for this game came from tampered installs placing a malicious DLL beside the real, signed executable. HoYoverse has said its anti-cheat stops running when you are not playing, after earlier criticism that it ran in the background. The Genshin mhyprot2.sys plate in the drivers section is worth reading for why kernel anti-cheat drivers are their own security surface, even though Honkai: Star Rail loads a different one.

Honkai: Star Rail installs a HoYoverse kernel-mode anti-cheat on PC. Here the honest answer is partial, and worth stating plainly: unlike Genshin Impact from the same publisher, Honkai: Star Rail does not use the mhyprot2.sys driver that became a textbook security case. The exact driver it loads is not cleanly documented in public; technical analysis points to a HoYoverse kernel protection component and signs of Tencent's Anti-Cheat Expert. So this guide names the posture, a kernel-level anti-cheat that runs at the deepest layer of Windows, without asserting a specific driver it cannot verify. The main process is StarRail.exe, signed by Cognosphere, alongside a StarRailBase.dll component.

The trust history that matters here is the publisher's, and it has two parts told carefully. First, the cautionary one that is not this game's: in 2022, Genshin Impact's anti-cheat driver mhyprot2.sys was abused by ransomware operators as a bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver tool to switch off antivirus from the kernel. That driver is catalogued in this guide's drivers section, and it is the clearest lesson in why a signed kernel driver is not automatically a safe one. That case was Genshin's driver, not Honkai: Star Rail's. Second, one that is this game's: in September 2024, researchers documented a ransomware sample that abused Honkai: Star Rail through DLL sideloading, dropping a malicious StarRailBase.dll next to the legitimately signed StarRail.exe so that ransomware loaded when the game launched. The legitimate, signed game is not itself harmful; the risk came from tampered or unofficial installs. Sources include SC Media, BleepingComputer, and Trend Micro.