Tag Archive for: Duty

Call of Duty cheaters targeted with crypto-draining software

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Gamers downloading cheats for the first-person shooter Call of Duty are reportedly being targeted by crypto-draining malware that has so far compromised the details of more than 4.9 million accounts.

Call of Duty cheat provider Phantom Overlay was made aware of the malware campaign this week after users started to make unauthorized purchases. Phantom Overlay provides a marketplace for Call of Duty gamers to buy cheats, such as aimbot and player detection behind walls.

As reported by malware sleuth VX Underground, an unknown entity is using malware to steal the credentials of cheaters before publishing them online. The culprit has also infected users with crypto-draining malware capable of stealing bitcoin from Electrum wallets.

Most users responding to VX’s news are reveling in the misfortune of cheaters.

Malware campaign spawns unlikely alliance

VX claims that “in a bizarre twist of fate,” video game company Activision Blizzard is working alongside cheat providers to help users infected with the malware because “The scope of the impact is so large.”

Indeed, VX reports that the accounts of an estimated 3,662,627 Battlenet, 561,183 Activision, 117,366 Elitepvpers, 572,831 UnknownCheats, and 1,365 Phantom Overlay have been compromised, making up 4,915,372 accounts altogether.

Read more: Fake crypto wallet in App Store for four years drained $120K in Stacks

Phantom Overlay reportedly approached gaming forum Elitepvpers, which confirmed that over 40,000 of its accounts were comprised

VX Underground claims that the amount of crypto stolen and the malware delivery methods are currently unknown. VX also clarified that not all of the comprised accounts are cheaters, adding that some impacted users were utilizing software for latency improvement, controller boosting, and VPNs.

Protos has contacted Phantom Overlay, Elitepvpers, and Activision Blizzard for comment and will update if we hear back. 

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail….

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‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’ Players Hit With Worm Malware

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According to TechCrunch it is unclear why the malware is spreading or what exactly the impact is on gamers. Valve, the owner of Steam, did not comment on the issue, according to the news website.

Public companies in the United States will soon have to report data breaches and hacking incidents four days after they deem an incident to have a “material” impact on their business. On Wednesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission voted to introduce the regulations that require firms to disclose cyberattacks once they have determined it will disrupt its operations or finances. The disclosures must detail the “nature, scope, and timing” of the attack, as well as the potential impact it will have on the firm.

Former SEC rules required companies to disclose cyber incidents but did not impose any strict timeline on doing so. This can lead to firms waiting weeks or months to notify customers and lawmakers about data breaches and cyberattacks. A separate part of the new SEC rules also requires companies to detail their processes for “assessing, identifying, and managing material risks,” heaping extra public accountability on firms to make sure they’re taking security issues seriously. The rules will go into effect by no later than December.

Since Vladimir Putin started his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s internet censorship has become even more expansive. A new report this week from researchers at Citizen Lab, a research facility at the University of Toronto, shows how the country’s censors have clamped down on the social network VK, which is similar to Facebook. Russia’s government has been ordering VK to remove posts, videos, and accounts almost every day since the start of the war, the researchers found after reviewing court orders issued by the government.

There’s been a thirtyfold increase in censorship since the start of the war, Citizen Lab researchers found. In total, 94,942 videos, 1,569 community accounts, and 787 personal accounts are blocked in Russia, which has clamped down on independent media and blocked social media such as Facebook and YouTube as it looks to control the information people read and access within its borders.

At the end of May,…

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Call of Duty players being infected with self-spreading malware

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San Francisco, July 28: Players of an old Call of Duty game are being infected by hackers with a worm that automatically spreads in online lobbies.

On June 26, a player of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 warned other players on a Steam forum that hackers “attack using hacked lobbies,” and advised using an antivirus, reports TechCrunch.

It looks like the malware mentioned in the thread is on the malware online repository VirusTotal.

Another player claimed to have analysed the malware and said in the same forum thread that the malware seems to be a worm, based on a number of text strings inside the malware.

The presence of those strings in the malware, which suggests a worm, was confirmed by a game industry insider who asked to remain anonymous because they were prohibited from speaking to the press.

Neil Wood, spokesperson of Activision, which released the game in 2009, referenced a tweet posted by the company from the ‘Call of Duty Updates’ account on Thursday that indirectly mentioned the malware.

“Multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) on Steam was brought offline while we investigate reports of an issue,” the tweet read.

It is still unclear why the hackers are spreading this malware.

The malware is a worm since it seems to automatically spread from one infected gamer to another through online lobbies.

“This means the hackers must have found and are exploiting one or multiple bugs in the game to execute malicious code on the other players’ computers,” the report said.

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Will ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Outsell ‘Call Of Duty Cold War’?

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We are less than a week away from the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, the last major game to be released this year, and perhaps the biggest of them all. After three delays this year alone, there’s no more pushing it back now, and it will arrive next week, even if it ends up “coming in hot,” as they say.

What I’m growing curious about is if there’s enough interest in Cyberpunk 2077 where it could achieve the rare feat of outselling Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, where Call of Duty is the biggest selling game of the year, every year. The exception to this is when there’s a new Grand Theft Auto release, but other than that, it’s all Call of Duty all the time.

But Cyberpunk is just massively anticipated, so I don’t think it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility. But I do think it’s somewhat unlikely in the end.

What do we have to compare right now? Well, Activision is not really reporting Call of Duty sales a month or so after release. It released information that Cold War was the biggest digital launch in series history, which is not a huge surprise given the trends we’ve seen in the industry the past few years, not to mention two of the four new consoles that debuted this fall literally do not even have disc drives.

Past that, however, we have not gotten any firm numbers of sales for the games. Last year’s Modern Warfare did have specific numbers revealed, $600 million in sales in three days, and then $1 billion by mid December. Reportedly sales are around 30 million by many estimates at this point in time.

What to compare Cyberpunk 2077 to? The Witcher 3, of course.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt did not have Call of Duty level explosive sales, and yet it did put up large numbers all the same. 4 million copies in two weeks, 10 million copies in the first year. But it’s been a slow build. Last we heard in December 2019, The Witcher 3 had sold 28 million copies worldwide, exceedingly close to those Modern Warfare numbers, albeit over a larger time frame.

Of course, there are other factors to consider. The success of Warzone in the past year may have eaten into Call of Duty sales, even if…

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