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WardenNet is a system designed to track the many signatures of Warden (Blizzard's dynamic anti-cheat mechanism).
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When Blizzard creates a new version of Warden, they create many different copies (which we call variations, which are identified by their signature) of that version, with the sole intent of making it difficult to counteract. This can be considered similar to polymorphic viruses, which change their appearance without changing the actual functionality in order to evade antivirus software. In this case, Warden is evading systems that disable or work around it, just in a different way. Instead of masking its existence, they mask its version, so that cheat developers cannot simply automatically compare the Warden loaded on a user's machine to the Warden loaded on their own to determine whether there was an update to Warden. This makes it extremely difficult to determine whether Warden was updated, simply based on a single loaded copy of Warden, unless enough of the functionality of Warden was changed that it cannot be matched to the current version.
WardenNet tracks signatures of Warden so that it can be determined how many are in circulation, and when signatures move into or out of circulation. When Warden has not been updated recently, there will be few new signatures compared to how many are in circulation. When Warden does get updated, all old signatures move out of circulation, and there will be a flood of new signatures. When this happens, the Warden update should be reported so that developers can analyze the new version of Warden for any important changes.
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