Thousands of Fortnite players who attempted to cheat in the massively popular Battle Royale shooter were dealt swift justice, after a hacking app that they downloaded secretly installed malware into their computers.
Fortnite, which recently celebrated its first anniversary with more than 125 million players worldwide, has taken the video game industry by storm. Unfortunately, some people are looking to take advantage of the popularity of Fortnite for their personal gain.
'Fortnite' Hacking App Comes With Hidden Malware
Game streaming service Rainway CEO Andrew Sampson narrated in a Medium blog post that his company started tracking hundreds of thousands of error reports that attempted to call different ad platforms. Rainway does not have ads on it, so the discovery immediately raised a red flag.
After confirming that Rainway itself was not compromised, the company's engineers noticed that adware was attacking some users. The victims did not have the same hardware or ISP and were using updated systems. The one thing that they shared, however, was that they played Fortnite.
Rainway discovered that the victims downloaded an app that promised free V-Bucks, the in-game currency of Fortnite, as well as an aimbot that will make all shots hit their targets. The cheating app, after it is installed, executes a man-in-the-middle attack by spreading adware in the victim's PC and modifying page requests to include calls for the Adtelligent ad service. The attack was also capable of intercepting confidential data that can be used for phishing or identity theft, while also creating vulnerability in a system that even more dangerous malware can exploit.
According to Rainway, it solved the problem by filing a report against the attack, but it came a little too late for some Fortnite players. The cheating app that included the malware had already been downloaded more than 78,000 times, resulting in nearly 400,000 error reports.
Hackers Exploit 'Fortnite' Popularity
This is not the first time that attackers have taken advantage of the overwhelming popularity of Fortnite.
One of the methods used by hackers in taking advantage of Fortnite players is releasing fake Fortnite for Android apps. Fortnite for Google's mobile operating system is not yet available, so hackers targeting impatient players used fake Fortnite for Android apps to steal personal data.
Despite numerous warnings and reports on the matter, Fortnite players are still falling for the fake Android apps. There is no better way for gamers to protect themselves from the fake Fortnite apps than simply waiting for an official announcement from Epic Games regarding the release of the game's Android version.
