The victim, seeing the game is not working, quits. When run, the malware appears to load very slowly - and then, nothing. Vesub Trojan disguised as Brawl Stars and PUBGĪnother example of cunning malware, Vesub, hides in pirated versions of Brawl Stars and PUBG for Android. In fact, that removes only the icon the malware remains, working in stealth mode to harvest online bank credentials. The game also serves as a front for Hqwar malware, which reports an installation error and prompts the user to uninstall the app. Back in 2020, we found more than 20 malicious apps on Google Play disguised as mods for the game, and this year saw a repeat. Minecraft remains very popular cyberattack bait, including on smartphones and tablets. Unzipping the archive loads Swarez on the unfortunate gamer’s device, where it proceeds to download Taurus spyware, a Trojan that takes screenshots and steals cryptowallets, desktop files, and passwords and other data stored in browsers. Users who try to download, say, cracks for Minecraft get sent through a long chain of redirects to a page with a ZIP archive, inside of which is another password-protected ZIP and a text file with a key. That is how the Swarez loader gets distributed. Alternatively, they can load infected, pirated copies onto existing warez sites. Cybercriminals take advantage of this, creating websites offering free keys, cracks, and unlocked versions of games adding Trojans and pushing them onto the first page of search results.

But for a “Minecraft crack” or “virus-free FIFA,” they turn to search engines. Most gamers know that the place to get official games is a specialized store such as Steam. Swarez: Danger at the top of search results Gamers, with their souped-up computers and brawny video cards, make ideal targets for cryptocurrency freeloaders - and a miner concealed inside a game with high system requirements can go unnoticed for quite some time, during which the computer is working for a malicious third party.

In the hierarchy of bad stuff users might get with pirated games, cryptominers rank far higher than adware.

With this uninvited guest on their computer or smartphone, users will constantly be closing banners, pop-up videos, and browser pages they didn’t open. Although not usually too harmful, adware can be very annoying. Perhaps the most common surprise greedy gamers find in their popular games is adware. Our experts took a look at how cybercriminals made money from gamers who skimped on both gaming and security, ending up with unexpected apps along with (or instead of) the games they thought they were downloading. Here are some we’ve found over the past year. So long as gamers seek out free apps in the form of unlicensed copies, cracks, and other goodies, cybercriminals will continue to prey on them, and we will continue to spotlight the dangers gamers face.

How to install cracked games