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Security

Hackers Are Infecting Call of Duty Players With a Self-spreading Malware (techcrunch.com) 36

Hackers are infecting players of an old Call of Duty game with a worm that spreads automatically in online lobbies, according to two analyses of the malware. From a report: On June 26, a user on a Steam forum alerted other players of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that hackers "attack using hacked lobbies," and suggested running an antivirus. The malware mentioned in the thread appears to be on the malware online repository VirusTotal. Another player claimed to have analyzed the malware and wrote in the same forum thread that the malware appears to be a worm, based on a series of text strings inside the malware. A game industry insider, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not allowed to speak to the press, confirmed that the malware contains those strings, indicating a worm.
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Hackers Are Infecting Call of Duty Players With a Self-spreading Malware

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  • Dammit that sucks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
    it means it's going to get taken down. I can't see Activision spending the time & money patching this. Kinda tired of jerks ruining things.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dj Stingray ( 178766 )

      Alternative: BattleBit Remastered. Been having a BLAST! Awesome community, really positive experience so far and the best part, I said goodbye to Blizzard/Activision!

      • Fine for the PC crowd, but they haven't brought it to Xbox or PS5 yet. Plus EA keeps threatening legal action against Battlebit's publisher. That may never go anywhere, or EA may cost them enormous amounts of time and money with frivolous lawsuits. EA is not pleased with how well Battlebit has done as compared to Battlefield 2042.

  • 10 bucks says Microsoft will start advertising defender is protecting you in game after their aquisition. (Game screen technology)

  • by doug141 ( 863552 ) on Thursday July 27, 2023 @12:36PM (#63718752)

    There's two different games, 2009's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and 2022's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II. This concerns the old game. The old game runs on a peer-to-peer hosting system, which was fully exploited by hackers once the game stopped receiving developer updates and player bans after becoming just a few years old, and being superceeded by the next title in the franchise. COD:MW2 Hackers could steal being the host, and then grief other players with god mode, progress resetting and player corruption, and other exploits. The game has been completely abandoned by non-hacking gamers for about 10 years.

    • by laxguy ( 1179231 )

      until Activision turned it back on last week and people have been promoting and playing it.

    • I bought it a few months ago to play the single player campaign. Totally worth the $15 I spent. Even ran on Linux perfectly. I read about this bug on the forums prior to purchasing the game. Lucky for me, I've absolutely zero interest in multiple shooter games.

      Sadly, newer FPS don't even seem to come with a single player storymode anymore. Very sad if you ask me. Sad the developers are only creating one huge map and sad the player base just accepts this. I guess if Battle Royal is your favorite format, this

    • In an industry ripe with bad title naming, this is one of the worst I've heard of.

    • There's two different games, 2009's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and 2022's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II. This concerns the old game...

      And here I thought it concerned a lazy marketing team...

  • The question is rather, why doesn't this happen more often?

    Security isn't exactly the biggest concern when it comes to game development. If anything, the only security concern is in making sure the DRM is tight enough that the game will at least survive the initial sales rush before its copy protection is broken and stripped. And no, multiplayer and required server communication help surprisingly little in that regard.

    Games are actually pretty attractive malware vehicles. Especially if they're of popular fr

    • Things go unnoticed until a catalyst gets everyone thinking about it. We used sprintf and its ilk for decades and it was widely known to be an issue, but it took until the right situation before it got exploited as hard as it did to cause a total industry shakeup. Speculative execution is another one, been exploitable for a long time but it only got "sexy" recently and now every CPU is hammered by every security researcher hoping to find the next sound-bitable headline.

      Video game exploits have been around f

      • I'm seriously waiting for the Roblox Meltdown. That thing has more holes than my golf socks, but it doesn't smell half as good.

        But we're far from "major concern". That worm may be the start, but it will take more than a couple teens crying over their lost progress in some shooter to create a reaction.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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