When playing a video game, most people do not worry about getting infected by the their game client. New research, though, shows that's exactly what is happening when 39% of all existing Counter-Strike 1.6 game servers were trying to infect players through vulnerabilities in the game client.
While Counter-Strike 1.6 is almost 20 years old, there is a still a strong player base and market for game servers to play on. With this demand, hosting providers rent game servers on a monthly basis and offer other services such as a the promotion of a customer's game server in order to increase their popularity.
In a new report by Dr. Web, researchers explain how a developer is utilizing game client vulnerabilities, the Belonard Trojan botnet, and malicious servers to promote the game servers of his customers and enlist more victims to the botnet. At its peak, this botnet grew so large that approximately 39% of the 5,000 Counter-Strike 1.6 servers were malicious in nature and attempting to infect connected players.