"'Cities: Skylines' Gaming Modder Banned Over Malware"

Chaos, a popular modder for the Cities: Skylines city-building game, has been banned after reportedly hiding an automatic updater in several of their mods to deliver malware to those who downloaded them. The modder released a redesigned version of a core framework project that most Cities: Skylines mods use to function called Harmony. The author then reworked other popular mods, listing his Harmony redo as a core download, thus requiring players to download it to get the mods to work. However, Chaos' version of Harmony was discovered to contain an updater that enabled the modder to infect the devices of those who downloaded it, with malware. Chaos also planted malware in other mods to bog down gameplay in order to get more players to download additional poisoned mods that he had created as solutions. The modder's accounts have been suspended, and some of his mods have been removed from the Steam Workshop. John Bambenek, the principal threat hunter at digital IT and security operations company Netenrich, pointed out that the distribution of malware via games, game mods, or pirated/cracked games is now a fairly common tactic among malicious American and European actors. This article continues to discuss the banning of a Cities: Skylines modder due to hidden malware. 

Threatpost reports "'Cities: Skylines' Gaming Modder Banned Over Malware"