Activision: Hackers use Call of Duty: Warzone cheats to install malware for mining cryptocurrency

New research published by Activision claims that a widely used cheat for Call of Duty: Warzone was, in fact, a hacking tool allowing hackers to take control of gamers’ computers.

According to the report, the cheat in question is a so called “dropper,” a type of malware app used to install additional malware onto the victim’s PC.

“The dropper examined in this report, ‘Cod Dropper v0.1,’ can be customized to install other, more destructive, malware onto the targets’ machines,” the report reads.

One of the goals of tha hacking campaign could have been to use unsuspecting gamers’ GPUs to mine cryptocurrency. The malware could also been used for credential theft.

“When it comes down to it, 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,” the report elaborates. “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.”

A lot of people might have fallen victim to the dropper tool. In February 2021 alone, the Call of Duty: Warzone creators banned over 60 thousand cheaters.