Those who frequent the New Releases category on Steam to dig out some new gems and support rising creators and developers beware, if you have the game ‘PirateFi’ installed, uninstall it immediately and give your system a deep scan to prevent further damage.
A Free-to-Play opened to the public last week, the game in question (if you can even call it a game) has been removed from Steam after officially determined that it contains malware dedicated to cookie stealing – a technique that robs the active session of a user that is more potent than simply phishing for credentials.
PCMag further reported the deliberate tactic PirateFi’s dev took as the game was promoted via Telegram, hiring for a certain “chat moderator” position that offers 17 dollars wage per hour. One user interacted with the recruiter in charge, however, the uniformly timed response of 21 seconds between each message gave away its “bot status”, further raising suspicion.
Valve strongly encouraged those who have installed the game to conduct full-system scans, check for newly installed software, and, if necessary, perform a complete system reformat. The full statement sent to PirateFi “owners” goes as:
“The builds containing the suspected malware have been removed from Steam, but we strongly encourage you to run a full-system scan using an anti-virus product that you trust or use regularly, and inspect your system for unexpected or newly installed software. You may also consider fully reformatting your operating system to ensure that no malicious software remains on your machine.”
Source: BitDefender, PCMag
