According to CoinDesk, a mysterious group of cybercriminals has released an infostealer targeting gamers who cheat in video games, impacting hundreds of thousands of players and stealing their bitcoin holdings. Game developer Activision Blizzard is working with cheat providers to help the affected players. The malware targets gamers who cheat in Call of Duty and has already impacted hundreds of thousands of players, with the numbers still growing, according to malware market informer @vxunderground. Some users impacted utilized gaming software for latency improvement, VPNs, and certain controller boosting software.
Call of Duty cheat code provider “PhantomOverlay” was the first to notice the suspicious activity after users reported unauthorized purchases. Rival cheat providers like Elite PVPers confirmed similar attacks to @vxunderground in the past week. The stolen data includes freshly stolen credentials, with some victims also reporting their Electrum wallets were drained. The total amount of crypto stolen is still unknown. Activision Blizzard is reportedly working with the cheat code providers to help the affected players. The current estimated number of compromised accounts includes over 3.6 million Battlenet accounts, 561,000 Activision accounts, and 117,000 Elite PVPers accounts. PhantomOverlay claimed the number of hacked accounts “are inflated” in a Telegram broadcast message on Wednesday. Exploiters have targeted game cheaters for years, with previous incidents involving Fortnite players being targeted by hackers in 2018 and 2019.