Hackers in video games are not new. Mostly though, it's more about cheating in the game against other players. This time, the threat actors are taking it a step further by infecting players from Call of Duty with malware.
Spreading Through Online Lobbies
The affected game is said to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was released back in 2009 by Activision. Despite the game being released more than a decade ago, there are still a few players who are active in the online game.
A user on Steam detected the malware and warned other players on the video game that the hackers were attacking using hacked lobbies. He then advised the players to run an antivirus, making sure that they were not infected by it.
The virus is said to be a malware online repository, VirusTotal. Upon being analyzed, a different player said that the malware was a worm, based on the series of text strings inside the malware, as reported by Tech Crunch.
The speculations have been confirmed by an insider from the gaming industry, although the source wanted to stay anonymous since they were not allowed to speak to the public or the press about it, they did say it was a worm based on the strings the malware had.
Activision is trying to resolve the matter, although they did not directly specify that it was about the worm found in online lobbies. The video game giant's spokesperson, Neil Wood just said that the game has been brought offline on Steam as they investigate the report of an issue.
According to reports, the worm is capable of automatically spreading to other players through online lobbies, which could've been possible by exploiting bugs in the game. It's still unknown what the threat actors hope to accomplish with this.
Right now, Activision is just trying to fix the problem. For those who were in an online lobby on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 around June 26th, it's best to take a quick antivirus scan on your PC to make sure that no malware got through.
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It's an Uncommon Method of Hacking in Games
This is a rare thing, especially with all the safeguards that video games usually have now. Mostly, people encounter malware by downloading from third-party sites. For example, there are game installers that pose as a cracked game so people would download it.
There are cheats for games that turn out to be malware, which also applies to other third-party files like mods. You can be hit with various kinds of malware. There's adware, spyware, trojans, and more, as enumerated by Kaspersky.
Some of them could be harmless enough such as adware, which will usually just bombard the player with unwanted ads. Others, however, are capable of not only destroying important files on your PC but stealing sensitive data as well.
Luckily, there is a way to avoid such instances from happening. First is installing an antivirus that's capable of detecting most if not all security threats. The second would be to avoid downloading pirated files as a lot of them will likely contain malware.
