Blog

Gamers Targeted By Hackers Through Code And Cheat Downloads

Apr 19, 2021 | Blog

Gamers tend to be surprisingly tech savvy, and as such, they’re a bit harder to trick with social engineering than many other groups.

Gamers do have a weakness, and it’s one that hackers around the world have recently begun to exploit in a systematic way.

Increasingly, security researchers are finding instances of poisoned cheat codes.

The basic idea is the gamer in question downloads a set of cheat codes for his or her current obsession. Lurking inside it is an embedded bit of malicious code, capable of deploying back doors to allow for further malware infection, as well as keystroke logging code. That enables the hackers controlling it to capture a wide range of passwords and other personal information from the compromised system.

Even worse, there’s a growing body of evidence that hackers are launching supply chain attacks against game development companies themselves. They’re specifically targeting Asian companies in a bid to infect vast numbers of systems, and based on initial estimates, it’s working. Security professionals who are tracking the trend now estimate that there could be hundreds of thousands of infected systems around the world, making this a quietly growing threat that has, until now, gone largely unnoticed.

If that wasn’t bad enough, and given that the hackers know that gamers tend to be tech savvy, they’re specifically designing the malware they’re using against them to actively evade detection, making them notoriously hard to pin down on an infected system.

All that to say if you are a gamer, and you enjoy making use of cheat codes to shortcut the time it would otherwise take to master the game, beware. Hackers all over the planet are now targeting you. It seems nothing and no one is safe these days.

FBI Program Tasked with Infrastructure Security Compromised

FBI Program Tasked with Infrastructure Security Compromised

The FBI program tasked with ensuring critical infrastructure security has been compromised by hackers, who now offer access to the program's data on the dark web. The breach was initially disclosed by Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security, who claims that the data was for...

Streamline Your Business with the Latest Smart Home Technology

Streamline Your Business with the Latest Smart Home Technology

Are you a business owner looking to get the most out of your Google smart home devices? If so, you're in luck! Google has enabled its Nest products and Android OS with the initial rollout of the Matter smart home standard. This means that businesses now have the...

Data Breach at Sequoia One Exposes Sensitive Customer Information

Data Breach at Sequoia One Exposes Sensitive Customer Information

What do you do when your most personal information has been compromised? This is likely the question that customers of Sequoia One asked themselves earlier this month as they were informed that the company had been hacked. Sequoia One specializes in the management of...

Cisco Reports Critical IP Phone Vulnerability

Cisco Reports Critical IP Phone Vulnerability

As a business owner, it's important to stay informed about potential vulnerabilities that could impact your organization. Recently, Cisco reported a critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-20968, affecting its IP Phone 7800 and 8800 Series. This new vulnerability...

Google Chrome Releases Two New Features

Google Chrome Releases Two New Features

Google Chrome is one of the more commonly used web browsers. Over the years, though, Chrome has gained a reputation for utilizing a large portion of a computer's memory. This can be a problem if you're running other resource-intensive tasks and don't want to slow...

Get a Free Consultation

 

Fill out the form below to receive a free consultation and learn how we can make your technology worry-free!

 

Contact Information

  • 39301 Badger Street, Suite 500
    Palm Desert, CA 9221
  • (760) 333-8523
  • info@icn.tech