Fortnite: Battle Royale has shown the ever-increasing interest for battle royale style games. The gameplay, inspired by stories and entertainment giants such as “The Hunger Games” and Japan’s very own “Battle Royale” follow a last-man standing vibe. Players land amongst a large sized map, must scavenge for tools, resources, weapons, health-kits, and are then thrust straight into the action. The last man standing wins, and prizes are then rewarded. Fortnite has, since it’s late 2017-launch, generated a recently reported $1 billion + of in game revenue, from additional bonuses alone. The game has generated a frenzy amongst the gaming community, with players obsessing over ‘V-Bucks’ and have resulted in following unprecedented ways to obtain them. What has followed, unfortunately, are massively spreading ‘crypto-jacking’ viruses and malware that users probably don’t even know they have.

TheTechGame recently reported the Fortnite viruses which promised free V-bucks that was downloaded approximately 78,000 times on a single file hosting site before being taken due to malicious content. This doesn’t take into consideration the other hosting sites it was uploaded to, and so on. The biggest danger to those in the gaming community within Fortnite, it seems is now ‘cryptojacking’, a process where no malware is downloaded, instead the user’s CPU is hijacked to mine cryptocurrency and send the cryptocurrency to another user’s wallet. The process has been spreading like wildfire amongst the tech community, and now is making its way to Fortnite it seems.


Cyberscoop is now reporting that fake Fortnite ‘V-bucks’ and even informational applications have been coded to add fraudulent cryptojacking processes. It seems that the amount of users that have been affected are in the thousands at the moment.

“Most users that have crypto-jacking processes on their devices don’t know until many days after the fact,” says Toshiki Tashiro, the project manager & lead at the Japanese 4.0 blockchain project Module. Module Blockchain works as an opt-in storage miner that hopes to bring awareness to the tech and gaming community about crypto mining. “Once [Fornite malware is] installed, CPU levels may rise to extremely high levels as devices then begin to mine cryptocurrency for the perpetrator. Many [users] say that their devices are acting very slow, then they go to check the CPU levels where it shows they’re using almost dangerous amounts of CPU.”

Security experts have alerted that hackers have flocked to cryptojacking instead of traditional virus spreading because of the undetectability these programs may have. Hackers can place scripts even in web pages that will utilize mining capability from the visitors’ machines. The Fortnite frenzy that has ensued has caused users to start downloading programs that they hope will give them cheats in the game, therefore unknowingly download programs on computers of many others. “What is being demonstrated now is a new sort of malware or hacking. People don’t even realize they have this malicious software on their computers. The gaming community innocently will fall victim to these attacks. The negative effect is that people don’t even know what they’re falling victim to,” Tashiro continues. “That’s a major goal of Module, to bring the awareness to the gaming community. It’s becoming more prevalent everyday, so the faster people get a hold of it, the better.”

Users, gamers, and active participants in the Fortnite community are encouraged to check their devices and systems for signs of cryptojacking. To do this, Tashiro encourages checking mobile device specs, such as CPU usage. “Look for abnormal usage levels. If you have no applications running, rising CPU levels could be a cause for concern. Download ad-blockers, and do regular checkups on browser and device specs,” Tashiro suggests. Additionally, those who believe they’ve fallen victim to a Fortnite related virus can follow CSOonline’s comprehensive guide on detecting and eliminating cryptojacking processes.

A recent game review by SidAlpha found that there are Steam games on the platform that may also be loaded with Virus Crypto Miners. The offending game in question is called Abstractism - an indie which masquerades as a "trivial platformer" but seems to be doing something far more insidious. The game in question has since been pulled from Steam after being highlighted in SidAlptha's latest video.





A statement from the Developer in question was pretty much we don't but we do.

Posted: Jul 30, 2018 3:32 pm
Last Updated: Jul 30, 2018 6:36 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: TheTechGame.com/Johnus