Streaming platform discovers adware virus posing as Fortnite hack

The developers of Rainway, a web-based game-streaming platform that lets users play their PC games anywhere, is hoping to shine some light on a malicious Fortnite scam that has compromised thousands of players. Rainway CEO Andrew Sampson wishes Epic Games were more vigilant about the issue.

Sampson posted a blog on Medium. It details how he and his team discovered some potent adware that had been masquerading as hacks for both aim-assist and free V-Bucks in Fortnite.

Basically, players looking to gain an unfair edge or some free currency instead installed some malicious “man in the middle” adware. This exploit rooted itself in people’s PCs by manipulating Windows to proxy all web traffic through a phisher in an attempt to gain personal information.

After diligent work to discover the source of the attack, Rainway then sent an abuse report to the host of the file. The download was promptly removed—but not after it had already accumulated over 78,000 downloads.

“While it should go without saying, I think you should not download random programs,” Sampson said. “An excellent personal security tip is that if something is too good to be true, you’re probably going to need to reformat your PC. It is hard to outright prevent people from being malicious, but that doesn’t mean its hard to prevent spread.”

At the end of his post, Sampson calls out Epic Games for not being vigilant enough to stop this sort of practice. YouTube, for example, is flooded with videos that peddle adware as hacks in an attempt to take advantage of unsuspecting players. Largely, no one seems to be policing against these scams.

“Epic could do a better job at educating their users on these malicious programs and helping them understand how airtight Fortnite’s systems are at preventing cheating,” said Sampson. “I’d also recommend they spend more time moderating YouTube to help take down these videos to avert a countless number of people from pwning themselves. Sometimes the allure of cheating is powerful, and a strong presence is needed to help push people in the right direction.”

H/T Gamasutra