Call of Duty: Warzone cheats are being used as a carrier of malware, according to an Activision report.
In a recent report, the editor of Call of Duty examined a type of hacking tool known as a ‘dropper’ that “is being touted for use against gamers posing as a scam for Call of Duty: Warzone.” Droppers are pieces of malware used to install additional software with specific functions, such as credential stealing, and the one described by Activision can be customized to install even more destructive malware.
The tactic dates back to March 2020, when a hacker came up with the idea of a free, effective, and “beginner-friendly” method of spreading Trojans. Since cheat programs are often given high-level privileges within a system, it is easy to convince the people who install them to disable or uninstall the security processes within your PC. The fake hack was then uploaded to a popular cheat site the following month, and despite the investigative procedures that were supposedly put in place on these sites, it was still being posted on March 1, 2021.
Activision goes on to point out that “the dependencies for a ‘genuine’ hack to work are the same as those required by most malware tools to run successfully”, and that “while this method is quite simplistic, it is ultimately a social engineering technique that takes advantage of the will of its target (players who want to cheat) to voluntarily lower their security protections and ignore warnings about the execution of potentially malicious software ”.
While it’s never a good idea to cheat, especially since Call of Duty: Warzone’s massive waves of bans are rolling out on a regular basis, Activision’s explanation is a helpful reminder that you may lose more than your Call of Duty account. Duty if you start downloading files of unknown origin.