Viruses in Minecraft?
As you know, Minecraft is gaining popularity every day and the number of players is steadily increasing. Therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes there are viral attacks on this game. About 50,000 Minecraft enthusiasts around the world suffered from such a virus. The reason was a malicious program. The number of victims is so high because the virus has been downloaded at the official game site.
It was activated when players download various skins from the official site. Of course, Avast’s antivirus system showed a warning that there was a potential threat, but only a few users paid attention to it because of visiting the official site of the game. You can read how to protect your computer on the site: https://skins4minecraft.com/
Avast has published on its site a detailed analysis of the virus program that infected computer gamers. The virus formats the hard disk, removes system programs and backups. However, after analyzing the computer code, it was determined that the virus was not written by experienced hackers. Also, gamers saw offensive messages. So the goal was simply to make fun of players and complicate their lives, rather than collecting confidential information.
According to Avast, the source code for the virus can be found on many virus creation sites. However, despite the fact that it is not very complicated, it still has the damage. Antivirus protected about 14 thousand users from a potential threat. But the main issue is the ease with which the virus was downloaded to the official site of game developers. Looking at the statistics obtained by Avast, most of the victims were from Russia. Analyzing the number of affected players, representatives of the company claim that the threat is quite serious. Avast gives examples of infected skins. If you notice a decrease in process performance, you need to look for a “tourstart.exe” file that launches itself.
To avoid infection, experts advise not to download skins from external sites. If you have already downloaded such a file, you should immediately check the PC for viruses. If the computer is infected and the system files are deleted, then you need to start the data recovery process.
According to statistical data, in January 2018, Minecraft had 74 million players worldwide, which is 20 million more than in the previous year.
However, only a small number of users are actively downloading various skins and add-ons to the game. Most players use the standard version of Minecraft. This explains the low level of registration of cases of infection by the virus in relation to the total number of players.
Mostly Minecraft is played by people from 15 to 21 years old. They occupy 43% of the user base. Therefore, hackers have decided to launch an attack on unsuspecting users who fully trust the game and developers of the official site.
Avast has already contacted representatives of Mojang and developers of Minecraft and they are actively working to solve the problem.
In spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of official sites are not threatened and developers promise complete security, you always have to be prepared that the virus can hit your computer at any time. In order to avoid this, one should not ignore antivirus messages and visit different sites, and especially not to upload files from such sites. After all, such files can be dangerous to your computer and cause irreparable harm.
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