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“Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

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Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#11

Post by jonas-w »

veave wrote: post #5

files-8ie,pages,dev does not resolve and 85,217,144,130 times out, so... the malware doesn't do anything anymore?

from TFA: > Until further notice, do not use the official CurseForge launcher, or download anything from CurseForge or the Bukkit plugin repository. While the control server for this malware is currently offline, any download from CurseForge or the Bukkit plugin repository in in the last 2-3 weeks should be treated as potentially malicious. This malware is unlikely to be detected by Windows Defender or similar antimalware products.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#12

Post by mr_00ff00 »

afarviral wrote: post #3

This is highly annoying/intentional timing as Minecraft 1.20 just got released but now it is tainted with fears of viruses and extra steps to mitigate. For a friend who streams minecraft content and relies on the income this is a big setback and extra-risky for them if their account secrets are stolen.

Maybe this is a dumb suggest, but what about using a VM or second computer?

I’m not a malware expert by any means, but I am pretty sure VMs are extremely hard for malware to escape when it isn’t expecting it.

And VMs take almost no technical skill to set up nowadays.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#15

Post by squeaky-clean »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #12
afarviral wrote: post #3

This is highly annoying/intentional timing as Minecraft 1.20 just got released but now it is tainted with fears of viruses and extra steps to mitigate. For a friend who streams minecraft content and relies on the income this is a big setback and extra-risky for them if their account secrets are stolen.

Maybe this is a dumb suggest, but what about using a VM or second computer? I’m not a malware expert by any means, but I am pretty sure VMs are extremely hard for malware to escape when it isn’t expecting it. And VMs take almost no technical skill to set up nowadays.

It's been years since I've done it so maybe it's much better now, but getting games to run properly in a VM was a huge hassle for me. In the best cases 3d acceleration was slow, often it just wouldn't work at all.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#16

Post by squeaky-clean »

duxup wrote: post #13
willcipriano wrote: post #8

When the creator gets caught I hope he uses the "in minecraft" defence.

What does that mean?

People try to get around online moderation bans for calls to violence or such by saying things like "Someone needs to kick that guy's ass... In Minecraft"

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#17

Post by mr_00ff00 »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #15
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a dumb suggest, but what about using a VM or second computer? I’m not a malware expert by any means, but I am pretty sure VMs are extremely hard for malware to escape when it isn’t expecting it. And VMs take almost no technical skill to set up nowadays.

It's been years since I've done it so maybe it's much better now, but getting games to run properly in a VM was a huge hassle for me. In the best cases 3d acceleration was slow, often it just wouldn't work at all.

ehh I didn’t think of that.

Still though, isn’t Minecraft streaming mostly single player? I assumed latency is the big concern with VMs.

Although I also have very little gaming experience, I can imagine for very good players even slight delays are widely noticeable.

but btw Minecraft is Java, right? So technically it’s on a VM anyway lol. (I know, not really the same, making a joke)

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#18

Post by basilgohar »

userbinator wrote: post #10

client.jar searches the entire filesystem When HDDs used to be the norm, that would raise an obvious audiovisual signal that something isn't right. Unfortunately with almost everyone using SSDs these days, and the loss of activity indicators[1] on a lot of machines, it would be barely noticeable. [1] I suspect that it's also in the interests of "officially sanctioned" malware to hide its presence.

This is one of the (several) modern trends of computing that I dislike severely. There are lights for all kinds of nonsense but actually useful information, like Wifi status, disk activity, and even POWER ON/OFF are removed for some misdirected sense of minimalism or style.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#20

Post by dspillett »

userbinator wrote: post #10

client.jar searches the entire filesystem When HDDs used to be the norm, that would raise an obvious audiovisual signal that something isn't right. Unfortunately with almost everyone using SSDs these days, and the loss of activity indicators[1] on a lot of machines, it would be barely noticeable. [1] I suspect that it's also in the interests of "officially sanctioned" malware to hide its presence.

For a modern OS a some inductor LED for drive activity would just be constantly flashing at different rates. Something is always writing to a log somewhere, just on the OS itself.

To actually be useful more information would need to be carried: different rates (by colour, brightness, or a simple bar of variable length), an indicator per drive if multiple, ...

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