Cheating Minecraft Players Targeted by Hackers

Japanese players looking to misappropriate illegally obtained Minecraft accounts for free haven't had it easy lately. The blog of Fortinet, a corporation dealing with cyber security, posted some interesting information about a new ransomware. People who download a file that looks like a list with logins and passwords to accounts of the Mojang's game, are in fact downloading malicious software on their computer.

The camouflaged program temporarily damages files smaller than 2 MB. The only chance to restore full functionality of the system and recover lost data is to pay a ransom of 2000 yen (about 17.55 USD). However, as it turns out, not everything will work as before. Larger files of a specific type are overwritten with random information, which makes their recovery impossible even after paying the "virtual" ransom. The software effectively destroys backups, so lost directories cannot be restored.

A list containing file types that will be irretrievably destroyed by ransomware.

Software's creators have chosen gift cards for streaming, gaming, and music platforms as the form of forced payment. The scammers also made sure that the unlucky users do not forget about the ransom. Each infected computer has a note pinned on the desktop that reminds them to pay the appropriate amount. Interestingly, the document also contains information that the hacker is available only on Saturdays and only on this day it is possible to recover your files. Fortunately, the Trojan does not download any data from the devices.

A program that attacks Minecraft players is one of the variants of the so-called chaos ransomware that appeared in June, this year. Other variants of this malware infect all hard drives and completely disable the Windows recovery option.