According to Avast, a crypto miner named Crackonosh is hiding in some cracked games, which searches for Monero coins on infected systems. So far, more than 220,000 systems are claimed to be infected.
According to security company Avast, many of the cracked games are infected by a crypto miner who is mining cryptocurrency in the background. The company became aware of the malware through a Reddit post now nine months old: after a user downloaded and installed the relevant software, their antivirus was removed.
Scrubs Krakonosh for Monero Coins
This is said to be caused by a malware called “Crackonosh”, which is the name chosen by Avast. The name is that Czech version of the mountain spirit Rübezahl روح Hence an indication of the suspected origin of the malware: Crackonosh likely came from the Czech Republic.
So far, malware has only been detected in cracked games. If an infected program is installed, the antivirus is uninstalled and Windows updates are deactivated. Then the malware starts mining the computer for the Monero cryptocurrency and transfers the calculated coins.
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According to Avast, Crackonosh has been around for at least three years: the first indications of the malware date back to June 2018. Meanwhile, more than 220,000 systems are said to be infected and about two million US dollars have been exploited. Users from the United States, Brazil, India, the Philippines and Poland appear to be mainly affected. But the company has also been able to identify 1,799 infected systems in Germany so far.
Crackonosh has so far been proven to crack in the following games:
- NBA 2K19
- Pro Evolution Soccer 2018
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Fallout 4 GOTY
- Far Cry 5
- The Sims 4
- The Sims 4 seasons
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- jurassic world evolution
- call
- We are a little happy
those: Avast
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