Hearthstone Cheats and Tools Spiked With Malware

itwbennett writes: Cheating at the online card game Hearthstone (which is based on Blizzard's World of Warcraft) can get you banned from the game, but now it also puts you at risk of 'financial losses and system ruin,' writes CSO's Steve Ragan. Symantec is warning Hearthstone players about add-on tools and cheat scripts that are spiked with malware. 'In one example, Hearth Buddy, a tool that allows bots to play the game instead of a human player (which is supposed to help with rank earnings and gold earning) compromises the entire system,' says Ragan. 'Another example, are the dust and gold hacking tools (Hearthstone Hack Tool), which install malware that targets Bitcoin wallets.'

1998 called

[Anonymous Coward]

1998 called... It wants it's attack vector back. Thanks.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Came here for this.

Symantec researchers are pretty incompetent if they're just discovering this, and CSO's Steve Ragan should seek a new job as a Slashdot editor - he'd fit right in with breaking news that broke centuries ago.

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[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Computers already had trojans in 1816?

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[aaronb1138]

Isn't this why we run our bots in VMs. Plus we can clone the template VM and run many, many copies of the software and bot as well as upload it to the cloud!

Reminiscent of the con games

[rmdingler]

Many of the cons that seem otherworldly in their magnificence (The Sting) [imdb.com] do not work on honest people.

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[techno-vampire]

I don't know if the con used in that movie was authentic or invented for the film, but early on, when they're trying to decide just which con to use, somebody suggests The Spanish Prisoner, [wikipedia.org] a classic con going back to the late 16th century, and still fooling marks today.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[alvinrod]

I don't even get the point of bots for something like Hearthstone. I can at least understand WoW or Diablo which have a lot of grinding built in to the game play, but what the hell does a bot even get you in a game like this? The only thing you can do (that I'm aware of as I don't play either) is play the card game.

The same goes for card counting apps. Perhaps they can give you a slight edge, but for the professionals they wouldn't be able to use them in tournaments so there's no point at sabotaging your

Card counting works at the tables

[Joe_Dragon]

Card counting works at the tables

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[TheCarp]

card counting isn't actually cheating, its just smart game play. Its only a bot if it makes the decision and plays for you, a tool that simply does math for you and remembers things for you is not, in any way, cheating.

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[myowntrueself]

card counting isn't actually cheating, its just smart game play. Its only a bot if it makes the decision and plays for you, a tool that simply does math for you and remembers things for you is not, in any way, cheating.

Smart game play is illegal in the casinos. Only stupid people are allowed!

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[TheCarp]

No. Casinos are private establishments who reserve and use their right to refuse you service for any reason that they choose, including, being a good player who can do basic arithmetic.

Besides, if you shuffle the deck every round, then card counting is irrelevant. Its more like, casinos broke their own game and didn't want to fix it because they make more money/hr with it broken because it plays faster from a shoe.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[TheCarp]

Well stereotyping cheaters is still stereotyping.

Some of them, I am sure, are really good players. I wouldn't assume many are, but I think it depends on the scenario. For example, an MMO player often has plenty of incentive to bot, since it can grind for him while he does something else. He isn't cheating while he is playing, he is cheating in between in order to not spend his time doing less interesting grinding.

He is going to be a very different player from someone who jumps on a quick multi-round FPS gam

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[guruevi]

Not really, you only get a small bit of gold after every 3 games won and you can't earn more than 100 gold/day (on top of quests). Besides getting to the 'golden' hero there is very little financial incentive to go with the bots, just play the damn game for an hour/day and you'll get all the gold you need.

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[dywolf]

dust is the biggest holdback to progression. that's what theyre grinding/hacking.

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[Quirkz]

just play the damn game for an hour/day and you'll get all the gold you need.

Blech. I don't have an hour a day in perpetuity to keep up. Honestly, after a couple of weeks of playing, it gets boring. So I take a few months off, and I'm behind. I grind for a week or two, pick up a few things, get bored, take a few months more off, and I'm further behind. I've never touched a bot, but some way of keeping up with the never-ending stream of stuff would be nice.

Alternately, Blizzard could recognize that ever-increasing gulf and find other ways for players to catch up. Dramatically drop th

Malware is everywhere

[penguinoid]

These days you can't even count on your operating system to be free from malware.

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[penguinoid]

Maybe you need a closer look at what mobile OSs are like.

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[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

Telemetry functions become malware at the point when even if you disable them they stay operational. It has then effectively become malicious software because it deceives the user. Many big tech companies [arstechnica.com] still do this even if you explicitly say no [pcworld.com]. This worries me [google.com].

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[Carewolf]

Only if you are a douche-bag that would twist the meaning of the word "malware" to include telemetry functions. Surely GNU/Linux zealots would never stoop that low. Right?

Spyware is spyware, but I would complain about all mobile operating systems, and Google Chrome on all platforms long before Windows 10.

I was a cheater back in the day

[Pedestrianwolf]

First real game I played on the Internet was the first Quake (via 14.4 modem) and I was immediately blown away by exactly *how much* I sucked. My first instinct was to find a way to cheat to win. It hit me then.. the reason I sucked is because I never actually learned to play. I always just cheated. I swore off cheats entirely and stuck with it. Along with getting tons better; I feel like it could have saved me some grief.

you high dial up pings killed you

[Joe_Dragon]

you high dial up pings killed you

not in quake

[drinkypoo]

Quakeworld was pretty much the last game you could play successfully over a modem

well well well

[Lirodon]

Watch out for the one that trips off Blizzard's anti-cheat mechanism as soon as you activate it just because that is the joke.

Maybe the game is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

When your game needs to be grinded by bots and other automated tools for hours upon hours upon hours to even think about being competitive against other players, maybe you need to consider the fact that the bots aren't the problem.