New Malware Threat March 2015: Targets Gamers, Locks Games and Forces Users to Pay to Unlock

A new malware has been uncovered which appears to be very much like last year's CryptoLocker "ransomware" that specifically targets popular video games as well as files pertaining to iTunes, photos and documents.

The malware was maliciously designed to find files related to gaming platforms created by Valve Steam and files related to tools used for game development including Unity3D and Unreal Engine.

The malware, which has been traced to a WordPress site, encrypts files associated with games, forcing gamers to pay to unlock them.

News of the malware dubbed TeslaCrypt surfaced via Bromium Labs. The company noted that although the malware's coding was not similar to that of its predecessors CryptoLocker and CryptoWall, it does the same thing: locking out files related to popular games until the user pays to open them. However, the gamer also has the option to ignore the malware and just reinstall the game if they do not mind losing their saved games, mods and other details such as maps.

Speaking about TeslaCrypt, a researcher from Bromium Labs explained that the malware targeted over 40 specific games, including real-time strategy games from Blizzard such as StarCraft II and WarCraft. The malware also targets a number of other popular games such as Call of Duty, Fallout 3, Half-Life 2, Resident Evil 4 and The Elder Scrolls. The games from specific companies such as Bethesda are also being targeted.

As of now the WordPress site being used by the hackers behind TeslaCrypt is still redirecting people to a page where a flash component present in an invisible banner infects browsers such as Internet Explorer and Opera and redirects them to a page which downloads the malware. Once the malware becomes active, it displays a banner to the users explaining that their files have been encrypted and that they need to make a payment within a specific time period.