Crypto Scammers Stealing Bitcoin Through Fortnite

Published 5 years ago on October 05, 2018

Crypto Scammers Stealing Bitcoin Through Fortnite

Everyone is talking about it, the most popular game at the minute (at least until Red Dead Redemption 2 comes out..) is Fortnite!Fortnite is always in the news for something or other nowadays. People complain that it causes violence, depression and even divorces! In the UK alone, Fortnite has been the sole reason for 5% of marriages ending according to a report in September.With the new season of Fortnite upon us, so do a load of new scams. In these new batch of fresh scams, the scammers seem to be after Fortnite players data and their Bitcoin.An investigation was conducted by the computer security firm, Malwarebytes who went into the ecosystem of the popular video game. The company found malicious code in Fortnite downloads which included hacks and cheats, such as wall-hacks and aimbots. For those who aren’t familiar with game speech, wall-hacks allow you to see through walls and aimbots simply aim your weapon for you. The scammers have particularly aimed their scam at players through using YouTube videos that have a link in the video description in order to download the hack. If the user clicks the link they will be directed to a fake website where they will download the hack which will start to download malicious files which target the user's data and their wallets of Bitcoin. Malwarebytes have said that the files collect the data and send to an IP address somewhere in Russia. The investigation report states:

“Some of the most notable things it takes an interest in are browser session information, cookies, Bitcoin wallets, and also Steam sessions.”

Of course, if you decide to cheat it a game with such a popular fan base and so many players going into a game, it will ruin the experience for everyone and there was bound to be a scam to be set up eventually, so maybe they have it coming? Also in this day and age, it isn’t hard to tell what is a scam and what is real. Don’t download things off the internet if you aren’t 100% sure on what it is. With that in mind, most of Fortnites fan base are young so they won’t have much of an online profile and I highly doubt they have any Bitcoin. What are your thoughts? Let us know down below in the comments!References:Quartz The Next Web

Investment Disclaimer

Robert Johnson

Robert first came across Bitcoin in 2016 during a meetup in Belgium, and has been hooked ever since. With a background in Economics, you can find Robert frequently looking at the Twitter feed of the SEC for any regulatory updates relating to Bitcoin and Crypto in general.