Winos4.0 abuses gaming apps to infect, control Windows machines Criminals are using game-related applications to infect Windows systems with a malicious software framework called Winos4.0 that gives the attackers full control over compromised machines. The malware, which appears to be rebuilt from Gh0strat, has several components, each handling distinct functions, according to Fortinet. …
Miscreants have long been attacking gamers. Back in the day when CDs were a thing, NoCD tools could often be infected (a very practical little program that would allow you to play that game without inserting the CD). But I don't really understand the point today.
Gamers don't have the money. They're worth nothing as far as ransoming is concerned, so there has to be another reason and the only one I can see is that gamers often have powerful rigs, or at least more powerful than the common PC user.
So it's a question of harnassing that power to do what, DDOS attacks ?
“The attack begins with a gaming-related lure...”
Sneaky! But what’s the lure?
Sadly, I feel like I might have been a victim. Many years ago, I succumbed to a gaming related lure: which would be space cadet pinball. And some guys used a 4-stage attack to take control of my pc. It suffered slowdown due to registry-fattening, spontaneous reboots and arbitrary updates. I felt helpless as days grew to years to decades! The latest virus doesn’t even play space cadet pinball anymore, you have to get an emulator or something just to launch that deadly gaming-related lure.
But that’s how I captured the virus, and control it. Once I started running Linux and Virt-Manager, I learned I could lock these viruses in nice little capsules. If they do anything mischievous I can shut them down and restore a snapshot.
Oh, don’t worry about the space cadet pinball. It still runs lo these many years gone by. Except now, the virus exists completely on MY terms mwa ha ha!
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