Due to their illegitimate nature, video game cheats can sometimes be used to disguise malware. Call of Duty: Warzone and those who cheat in the game are the victims of one that’s been recently discovered. Though oddly enough, the discovery is made by the game’s own publisher, Activision.
And from the company’s report on the malware, it’s not a particularly sophisticated one either. In fact, this Call of Duty: Warzone “cheat” relies on the willingness of the victim to let it into their system. As is the case with most “genuine” cheats, the malware asks the cheater to either disable or uninstall any existing firewalls, and any other system safeguards. And desperate enough cheaters do this willingly, welcoming the malware in.
Fittingly, this has been circulating in the black hat hacker circles as a tutorial for beginner hackers “to make some easy money”. The malware is disguised in a fake trainer generator as “some nice bait for your first malware project”.
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The malware itself serves merely as a “dropper”, through which hackers can send more malware. Sources to Vice say that one of the goals of this is to use gamers’ GPUs for cryptocurrency mining.
This is just another episode of those trying to get an unfair edge finding themselves on the receiving end instead. With all the risks of cheating, one would imagine it would take less effort to actually practise and improve.
(Source: Activision via Vice)
