Crackonosh; Cracked PC games infect over 200,000* systems with cryptocurrency miner malware

[DeScruff]

3 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

As a youth I pirated relentlessly, free games and all.  As an adult I stopped for a few reasons:

1) I got a job and got money.
2) If you wait a couple years, every game on Steam goes on sale for $5 anyway.

3) Some games, even single player games, get a lot of updates or new content.  The Pinball Arcade was a prime example, getting new tables every few months.  I don't want to constantly have to re-pirate a game just to get an update/new content.

That said, if Steam ever shut down, you bet I'd be joining the effort to pirate the games I had paid for.

I do still 'pirate' games sometimes, but its usually for the purposes of retrocomputing and the games are not for sale today and disc copies are hard to find on eBay.  I'm not hurting anybody with those.

Buying media as a kid, even if you have cash was, and still is difficult.

When I was a youth, piracy was the only way to get some titles. There was no Steam, no GOG, no digital stores whats so ever, so unless you could find the game in stores you were outta luck. - Gamestop stopped stocking PC games besides WoW for a long time, and Bestbuy's selection tended to be lacking - Even with new releases.
Oh and flat out forget anything older then a few years. I was unable to purchase a PC copy of Morrowind till sometime after Skyrim came out. (Same story with Diablo 2, DOOM 3 exc.) A whole generation of PC games were flat out inaccessible unless I wanted to play them on OG Xbox, or pirate them.

And when Steam started to become popular, it was sorta easier, but still difficult for young me to buy games. I had money, but I didn't have a Debit, or Credit card.
If I wanted to get a game, I had to ask my parents to buy it for me and give them cash. (Which was annoying because I couldn't just ask them any time, they had to be in the right mood.)
I do remember riding my bike to the closest drug store just to buy gift and prepaid cards. - Which was insanity cause I remember doing that on a cold, and rainy day, cause Steam had one of those flash sales, during the Steam winter sale back in the day on a game I really wanted. I'm pretty sure the clerk thought I was a drug dealer cause for a while I was buying giftcards with cash, but no thats just how I got my allowance, and was payed to fix peoples stuff.
- This was certainly an era I would pirate, and buy later on Steam.

Nowadays I can easily pay for what I want. No problem!
Well... except when nobody will sell the game... Is it piracy if its essentially abandonware? Will the Quaker Oats guy come after me for downloading Cap'n Crunch's Crunchling Adventure?

[Quackers101]

2 minutes ago, DeScruff said:

Nowadays... Well... Is it piracy if its essentially abandonware?

A lot of legal trouble, but yesn't.

In some ways, piracy can be a way to uphold the value and not lose a big art form. Were even bigger companies had to do some "piracy" and emulation of their older games, or games they had deleted or dissappeared. Also you never know if they will remaster it in like 5-10 years later and if it's truely "abandoned".

[DeScruff]

6 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

A lot of legal trouble, but yesn't.

In some ways, piracy can be a way to uphold the value and not lose a big art form. Were even bigger companies had to do some "piracy" and emulation of their older games, or games they had deleted or dissappeared. Also you never know if they will remaster it in like 5-10 years later and if it's truely "abandoned".

I'm not even talking big games. These days it tends to be those super small "This sold < 50K copies" Developer and publisher are long gone.
Then again... I guess if The Mystery of the Druids got revived, and Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is getting a rerelease anything is possible if its meme worthy enough.

[da na]

This is the 1 time I've been thankful I can't afford AAA games. I'll just stick with my Rocket League for now.

[Eaglerino]

19 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

This is the 1 time I've been thankful I can't afford AAA games. I'll just stick with my Rocket League for now.

wtf does that have to do with this

[da na]

17 minutes ago, Eaglerino said:

wtf does that have to do with this

Because I can't afford any of the games on the list of affected games?

[Spotty]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Because I can't afford any of the games on the list of affected games?

It's only pirated copies of those games. Legitimate copies are not affected. 

[TrigrH]

10 hours ago, Spotty said:

The malware EA embeds in to their games in the form of Lootboxes is not as easily removed

Just set your region to Belgium.

[Moonzy]

Jokes on them, I already mine on my PC!

[tikker]

Quote

Here are infected installers we found:

Just out of curiousity, how do AV companies come to such lists? I guess they ask the person to see this happen to send the infected installer and afterwards every detection just gets uploaded to their servers? Or did Avast just hoist the sails and go hunting for treasure themselves. Are they required to report you to the authorities after this if you provided them with information?

[Heliian]

19 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

here until tencent is 50% of the market, and also when china becomes 50% of movies due to it's growth in media production that soon or already is at the "hollywood level".

Hollywood is trash anyways.  Can't wait for the next marvel movie! 

[Howard1909]

On 6/26/2021 at 9:32 PM, Spotty said:

Yep, this is nothing new. Pirated software/games/movies/music have always been a popular delivery mechanism for malware, even going back to the "Nickelback album mp3.exe" days on P2P file sharing programs. The viruses have gotten a lot more advanced since those days, and what's interesting about this is how aggressive it was in attempting to avoid detection by delaying activation and searching for and removing anti-virus software. Goes to show that running an anti-virus won't protect you if you're pirating games.

 

Yep, it was free back in May last year! https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/o349k55255a257/GTAV-Premium-Edition-Available-Free-on-the-Epic-Games-Store-Until-May-

I'm guessing the people who downloaded the cracked version missed it when it was free, or they were banned from GTA: Online for cheating. Seems that the lobbies in GTA Online are full of cheaters.

 

I've actually been playing Jurassic World Evolution this week which I got for free from Epic's weekly free games at the end of 2020 as part of their Christmas giveaways.

I am using the free version of gta 5 which I brought during the free giveaway of Epic games previous yr.

Should I be worrying about getting infected?

[Quackers101]

12 minutes ago, Howard1909 said:

I am using the free version of gta 5 which I brought during the free giveaway of Epic games previous yr.

Should I be worrying about getting infected?

read the other posts, this is not about free legit copies, only pirated.

So no in short, unless other issues of hacking servers would be a thing, which it seems like its not.

Can't say about the EA leaked codes though, for other games.

[DemiGod]

Don't get the OP and other people really hating on pirating, and feeling high and mighty for that or right in some way. 

First of all there are sites that I used for a decade to download hundreds of games, and haven't found a single virus, believe me I would know if I was infected, I scan my network and my pc  regularly, just to be sure and I find it fun. 

Moreover not everyone that pirates is an a*****e there are f

good reasons for it, I buy games that I love even if they don't have multi-player and there is no reason to buy them, but I pirate most of EA games, for understandable reasons, and games that have loads of micro transactions etc, I will gladly pay 60€ for a good well polished game, but I refuse to pay 60€ +500€ extra on dlc or micro transactions( Sims 4 for example) just to get a feature that should have been in the game to begin with. Also sometimes I pirate the game just to see if I will like it, what's the point of buying a game if you will quit it in 2 hours, if I like it I will buy it if not then just uninstall and be done with it. 

 

Just my two cents on the matter

[WolframaticAlpha]

On 6/27/2021 at 1:59 AM, CerealExperimentsLain said:

As a youth I pirated relentlessly, free games and all.  As an adult I stopped for a few reasons:

1) I got a job and got money.
2) If you wait a couple years, every game on Steam goes on sale for $5 anyway.

3) Some games, even single player games, get a lot of updates or new content.  The Pinball Arcade was a prime example, getting new tables every few months.  I don't want to constantly have to re-pirate a game just to get an update/new content.

That said, if Steam ever shut down, you bet I'd be joining the effort to pirate the games I had paid for.

I do still 'pirate' games sometimes, but its usually for the purposes of retrocomputing and the games are not for sale today and disc copies are hard to find on eBay.  I'm not hurting anybody with those.

NO BRO YOU HAVE TO BUY ORIGINAL CARTRIDGES OF VIDEO GAMES FROM THE 1980's.

 

Seriously, I can't get enough of the peole who say sh*t like this. Game preservation and Piracy are very different, and unfortunately many continue to mix preservation and piracy

[CerealExperimentsLain]

2 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Seriously, I can't get enough of the peole who say shit like this. Game preservation and Piracy are very different, and unfortunately many continue to mix preservation and piracy

I mean, I do like owning the original games on physical media, it's just that it's not always reasonable in price or even available.

[GDRRiley]

ETS2 is on this list? I'm surprised, why would anyone pirate a game thats often under 10$

[xAcid9]

I hope this don't give any idea to publisher or game dev. 

"You can't afford our games? Let us mine with your PC and we will unlock the game after you get <insert coins>!!"

or actually, that seems like a good idea... at least until someone abuse. I'm pretty damn sure some companies will abuse it. 

[Moonzy]

Just now, xAcid9 said:

I hope this don't give any idea to publisher or game dev. 

"You can't afford our games? Let us mine with your PC and we will unlock the game after you get <insert coins>!!"

or actually, that seems like a good idea... at least until someone abuse. I'm pretty damn sure some companies will abuse it. 

Honestly, if it comes to that then steam might as well just re-enable crypto as a way to buy games

[Spotty]

I updated the original post to make it a little clearer that this only affects pirated games, not legitimate copies.

 

2 hours ago, DemiGod said:

Also sometimes I pirate the game just to see if I will like it, what's the point of buying a game if you will quit it in 2 hours, if I like it I will buy it if not then just uninstall and be done with it. 

You can refund games bought on Steam if you do not like them, provided you refund it within 2 weeks of purchase and have less than 2 hours of gameplay. You can already buy a game, try it, and get a full refund for it if you don't like it.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

 

2 hours ago, DemiGod said:

Don't get the OP and other people really hating on pirating, and feeling high and mighty for that or right in some way. 

For me it's bitterness from regularly dealing with spoiled and entitled brats that expect people on the forum to help them find how/where to pirate videos games or for us to spend our time troubleshooting the problems they have with pirated games or removing viruses resulting from said pirated games. It's not uncommon for us to tell them "No, we're not going to help you pirate games. Piracy is illegal" for them to then throw a tantrum spamming the forum with "Fuck this website and its stupid fucking mods what's the fucking point if you won't even help me pirate Call of Duty!! You don't even make the game so why do you fucking care if I pirate it just fucking tell me how to get the crack to work so I can play the game!!!".

If you want to pirate games, go ahead. But if you do then you need to take responsibility for it and accept the risks, don't come here expecting help when things go wrong.

 

I also don't like many of the excuses people make to try and justify piracy of something that is as non-essential as a video game. You don't need to play the latest video game. If you can't afford it or simply don't want to pay for it then don't play the game.

 

The Avast article I linked to in the OP has the checksums if you want to check the games you pirated to see if they are in the known infected list.

 

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

ETS2 is on this list? I'm surprised, why would anyone pirate a game thats often under 10$

Some of the games on the list have been given away for free in the past. I don't think it matters how much a game costs some people just think they're entitled to it for free. It is also worth noting that the top 3 countries reported to have downloaded this were Phillippines, India, and Brazil which are all poorer countries where $10 could be more than a days wage so the price of video games would be a much bigger motivator to pirate them, but that doesn't explain why Poland, USA, and UK which have much higher minimum wages were also in the list of most infected systems.

From the perspective of the people behind the malware they just want to use popular video games that can be cracked and seemingly work as intended in order to remain undetected and ensure it is widely distributed. The more people in their mining network the more money they make, doesn't matter to them how much the game costs to buy as long as people are willing to pirate it.

 

1 minute ago, xAcid9 said:

I hope this don't give any idea to publisher or game dev. 

"You can't afford our games? Let us mine with your PC and we will unlock the game after you get <insert coins>!!"

or actually, that seems like a good idea... at least until someone abuse. I'm pretty damn sure some companies will abuse it. 

It would make more sense just to use your PC to mine with when you're not using it then spend the cryptocurrency you mined to buy the games you want to play.

[xAcid9]

13 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Honestly, if it comes to that then steam might as well just re-enable crypto as a way to buy games

They don't? When and why?
I remember I bought few games worth around $300 circa 2013/14 with Eth. 

7 minutes ago, Spotty said:

It would make more sense just to use your PC to mine with when you're not using it then spend the cryptocurrency you mined to buy the games you want to play.

I'm sure a lot of guys don't want to deal with the hassle of setting up a miner and dealing with wallets. Maybe if store like Steam/GOG/EGS can bundled with something like a Nicehash and auto mine the best coins for your rig and put it into your Steam wallet so you can buy any games you like, that'll be great. 

But crypto value need to be much less volatile before something like that can happen imo. 

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, xAcid9 said:

They don't? When and why?

They no longer do since 2018 BTC "crash"

Was nice being able to buy games with cents worth of electricity

[Mihle]

38 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I updated the original post to make it a little clearer that this only affects pirated games, not legitimate copies.

 

You can refund games bought on Steam if you do not like them, provided you refund it within 2 weeks of purchase and have less than 2 hours of gameplay. You can already buy a game, try it, and get a full refund for it if you don't like it.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

GOG doesn't have the 2 hour limit but have to be accepted by a person (not automatic), but not sure how strict they are.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

4 minutes ago, Eviljuche said:

Agree. Even Nintendo uses pirated ROMs in their mini series of retro-consoles.

This is actually not true.  Nintendo does use what are commonly 'standardized' format, like the iNES ROM, in the ROM scenes but the ROMs used are believed to be original dumps they made and in some case modified slightly for the releases. 

These are open standards and there's no need to reinvent the wheel when building your little ARM emulator box when existing standards exist.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

Just now, Eviljuche said:

They use the standard that was created mostly by pirates, which is kinda pro-pirate thing to do anyway.

An open standard is an open standard.