Hackers have been hiding malware in cheating software for Call of Duty: Warzone and have been trying to spread it to “cheating cheaters,” as a report from Activision calls them (via Vice).
You can read the full report here, but it explains that there’s been a campaign by hackers to try to get Warzone players to download a fake cheating engine. After players run it, the malware can then go on to infect the computer with whatever payload is chosen by the hacker.
In short: cheaters never prosper. If the malware doesn’t get you, you’ll likely just get banned from the game instead.
Players downloading cheats to help them pwn and then getting pwned themselves is nothing new. I’ll admit it: I wasted my childhood by being a serial cheater, sneaking peeks at my sister’s Battleship board or slipping myself a couple extra $100s when acting as the banker in Monopoly. And when playing video games, I cheated, too. Never online (I had dial-up in the age of Modern Warfare 2), but I certainly downloaded my fair share of patches and mods to try to make games easier or to get better loot.
There were absolutely times I paid for it, knocking the family computer out of commission with a nasty virus and having to spend the rest of the day fixing the computer before my mom came home.
Call of Duty isn’t alone in having hack-infested hacks: players downloading cheats for Valorant, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox have all gotten nasty surprises. It seems today’s gamers are learning the same lesson I did: if you’re cheating at the game, you’re really only cheating yourself.
