We all know to not open spam emails that claim you’ve inherited millions because your great uncle died in a rock climbing expedition in the Himalayas, but hackers are coming up with more sophisticated ways to take control of your PC and dig out your personal details.
Here’s a hack for you. A life hack, that is. Read our list of the best PC games and you’ll know what the best games are. No worries.
Hackers recently targeted a vulnerability in Valve’s Source Engine that allowed them to load malicious code into custom games in anything from CS:GO to Team Fortress 2, as reported by OneUpSecurity, via Motherboard.
Custom assets could be loaded into the game and then subsequently downloaded by users who unwittingly play the custom games used to scam people. In one specific case, the virus was loaded into a ragdoll animation that triggers upon death. Basically, when the hackers killed you, they could take over your computer.
“As videogames are common inside employee break rooms and homes of employees, exploitation of a vulnerability could be used in a targeted attack to jump the air gap to a private network,” Justin Taft, the researcher who discovered the virus, explains. “Additionally, discovering a remote code execution vulnerability in a popular videogame can be used to quickly create a botnet or spread ransomware.”
Luckily, Valve were quick on the uptake and immediately patched the bug. That means you’re safe to be bad at videogames once more.