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. Being free-to-play (and with an 88% review score before it was taken down this week), it was easy to get access to and being on Steam comes with the implied assurance that the game itself is safe.
