According to a report by TechCrunch, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been targeted by a worm that can automatically spread through online lobbies. The game, which was released in 2009 but still has a passionate fan base, has been taken offline by publisher Activision while conducting an extensive investigation.
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer mode on Steam has been disabled while investigating an issue,” said a tweet from the official Call of Duty Updates account.
The issue was first spotted by a user posting on the game’s Steam forum in June 2023. In the title opened by the user; stated that hackers attacked using hacked lobbies and that a malicious software found in the VirusTotal online threat pool was used.
Further analysis published in the Steam thread determined that the malware is a worm that can exploit vulnerabilities in application code, meaning it can circumvent typical security measures surrounding code injection. Once the malware infects a game lobby, it can infect all users’ machines that access the session by running localized code.
It is recommended that players or anyone accessing the game since June 2023 immediately run an antivirus or other security scan.
In December 2022, Activision was the victim of a massive cyberattack in which nearly 20,000 records of employee information were stolen and posted online. Data that hackers claim was stolen through Activision’s content delivery network (CDN) Azure was made available free to all users of a popular hacking forum.
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