Something that no one can deny is that video games have become popular to the point that it would be strange for someone not to know them and that is why cybercriminals have taken advantage of this by looking for ways to steal through them, today we will see a threat called Crackonosh, which is distributed hidden among pirated games.
Pirating video games, or anything else, such as series, books, etc., raises an ethical question, which for millions of people does not exist and that is that getting the best video games completely free is too great a temptation for many gamers. The problem is that many times when you download a pirated video game, you are downloading something else and it was Avast that detected a dangerous malware called Crackonosh, which is distributed hidden among the pirated games, and installs a cryptocurrency miner, consuming computer resources while cryptocurrencies are left to cybercriminals.
Its discovery was possible because Crackonos deactivates the antivirus that you have installed on your PC, so that it cannot be deleted. Avast assures that it has found it in dozens of thousands of PCs, mainly in India, the United States and Brazil, but that is not why you should trust yourself, these are only the main affected ones. And infections with this malware continue to grow, with 800 infections a day. That is only among those who have Avast antivirus, so surely its expansion is much greater.
Installing the fake game, installs the XMRig cryptocurrency miner, which consumes PC resources by mining the Monero cryptocurrency while it is on, which makes the computer run slower. Monero is usually the one chosen by these types of malware, because it is a more opaque cryptocurrency than Bitcoin and the like, by not making the transactions public. Unfortunately, this is not an easy virus to remove, since you have to block executions in the Task Manager, and edit the Registry, among other things, and that is why you should think twice before downloading something pirated.
Other reads:
The danger and risks of online games
Cyberattack that have occurred to Video Games
