A group of hackers on the 6th of February managed to sneak a pirate-themed survival game named PirateFi onto Steam. The is credited to a developer called Seaworth Interactive.
The game was laced with malware which is intended to pilfer users’ browser cookies. It lingered on the platform for at least a week before Valve finally intervened to remove it from the storefront and alert the users that their computers might be compromised.
Although the Steam page for PirateFi has been removed, remnants such as screenshots could be found all over the internet. It has been estimated by SteamDB that around 800 to 1,500 users might have downloaded the free game before it was eventually revealed.
One of the users noted that the promotional images and videos were actually lifted from another survival game, Easy Survival RPG. PCMag was the first one to break the news about the game.
It reported that antivirus programs of some users flagged the game as ‘Trojan.Win32.Lazzzy.gen’. It was labeled as a malware variant that aimed at stealing browser cookies. With this information, hackers could possibly invade the information of various online accounts of the users.
In addition to this, PCMag revealed that an individual who claimed to represent PirateFi was advertising for an in-game chat moderator position at $17, it is a post that has been making rounds on Telegram.
One of the readers speculated that they were talking to a chatbot because of the quick responses and the suggestion that was given to them to download the malware-ridden game.
After the removal of the game, Valve reached out to the users who played PirateFi and informed them that the developer’s Steam account had uploaded versions that contained suspected malware.
Valve advised that anybody who downloaded the game should conduct a comprehensive system scan with antivirus software to protect their PCs and look for any newly installed applications that seem suspicious.
