Cheat Codes & Gaming Mods - Hackers Ruining Online Games & Gamer

Those who are passionate about video games are very familiar with “cheat code hacking”, it’s been beneficial when the playing becomes tough.

These codes are being extensively used by gamers to enhance their performance; they have been noticed to be as popular among the cyber-criminal.

However, cheat codes are not the only attack vectors, but the attackers have found many different other ways to mess with online gamers.

Serving trojans through cheats and mods

• Cisco Talos disclosed a new campaign where gaming mods and cheat engines were weaponized with RATS to target gamers.
• The methodology of the attack engaged in adding cryptos to cheat codes, cheat engines, and mods that made it challenging for security teams to analyze the attack.
• The ultimate reasons for the attack were to serve Xtreme RAT that possessed attackers to take control of victims' microphones and web cameras.
• As highlighted by the researchers, the attackers use malicious links of game cheat distributed via YouTube videos and social media sights as the affinity to attract.
• Gamers attention.
• Here is another incident, a threat actor disguised COD-Dropper v0.1malware as cheat programs for ' call of duty: War Zone to infect video game players.
• The cheat code was pushed by the YouTube ads that promised users an ' unrecognized cheat for the game.
• In repeatedly attempting to scam people, the ads also provide details about a private version of the cheat for $10, with payment only in BTC.

A proper bait to trap gamers

Cybercriminals took advantage of the absence of Sony’s new PS5 console to weave a well-crafted phishing scam against users.

The scammers behind the services promised the receiver to win the console by completing a short survey.

Instead, the targets were trapped into sharing their personal details and parting away with money that was asked for the delivery of the console.

When curiosity and fear are used, Preying on user’s curiosity and fear is a go-to attack vector for most phishing scams and gamers have no expectation of this.

For instance, users with steam accounts were trapped into the sack that warned them about an illegal purchase on their accounts.

The phaser created a sense of urgency by informing the victims that their accounts would be suspended if they cannot contact a fake steam admin.

Final words

In 2020 alone, more than 61%of gamers had reported being pointed by some kind of malware attack and scams, including ID hackers. Besides in January, more than 500000 credentials tied to the top two dozen leading gaming companies were put up for sale on an underground marketplace.

This implies that as the gaming industry continues to grow in revenue, threat actors will continue to launch more cyber attacks, putting both prayers, as same as studios and publishers at risk.