Hackers are trolling wannabe cheaters in Call of Duty: Warzone with malware disguised as cheats

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A group of hackers has decided to take advantage of Call of Duty: Warzone’s cheating problem by disguising malware as a new cheat for the game, according to a new security report from Activision. The report says that the malware is disguised as a cheat and requires users to sacrifice some important security measures in order to download.

Cheaters have been a huge problem for Warzone. Earlier this year, Activision banned over 60,000 accounts at one time for using cheats. The fact that cheating has become so popular in this game is exactly what makes it an appealing place for people to try and steal other people’s data using malicious software.

The malware, called CoD Dropper v0.1, was advertised as a “newbie-friendly” Warzone cheat making it more appealing to users who wanted to cheat but may not have had the technical knowledge required to do so. In fact, the processes for downloading cheats and downloading malware are actually pretty similar.

Both instances require users to shut down specific security measures, making individuals who may not know exactly what they are doing the perfect targets for people looking to steal personal information. In the case of Warzone cheaters, their willingness to drop security measures to be able to cheat has led some users to a pretty significant security breach. Activision concluded in its report:

“The dependencies for a ‘genuine’ cheat to work are the same as those needed by most malware tools to successfully execute. System protections need to be bypassed or disabled, and privileges need to be escalated to allow the program to run correctly and/or establish persistence. While this method is rather simplistic, it is ultimately a social engineering technique that leverages the willingness of its target (players that want to cheat) to voluntarily lower their security protections and ignore warnings about running potentially malicious software.”

Ultimately this malware exists because people want to cheat in Warzone. The game has become a haven for cheaters without morals and that is precisely what has allowed this kind of malicious software to come out. As long as Warzone remains full of cheaters this kind of problem will certainly persist in the community.

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