Though there is a happy ending.
This year has come with a few too many reminders that even verified storefronts like Steam can’t fully protect you from malware. Where previous attempts like PirateFi got as far as stealing Steam accounts, a new malware has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of those worst affected by this latest scheme was someone raising money to fight cancer.
As reported by Tom’s Hardware, a streamer named RastalandTV went live earlier this week, looking to raise $5,000 to fight stage 4 cancer. After being prompted to download a Steam game named BlockBlasters from his chat, he lost $32,000. It turns out, on August 30, that the Steam game had been injected with malware, and upwards of $100,000 was reported stolen by streamers, creators, and crypto owners.
G Data broke down how exactly this happened and pointed to the injection of a ‘game2.bat’ file that was added to the game in August. G Data points out this is « a very sobering reminder that malware does real damage to real people and is far more than just some abstract number in some abstract and faraway place. »
According to SteamDB, around 6k users own BlockBlasters, and Gamalytic suggests hundreds had the game installed.
