Security researchers from antivirus vendor Webroot Software warn that malware pushers are targeting StarCraft II pirates. A variant of the Zbot trojan is distributed on torrent and warez sites as a custom loader for the highly anticipated game.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the sequel to one of the best-selling PC games in history. After being in development since as early as 2003, the new installment was one of the most anticipated games of the past several years. StarCraft II was officially released on Tuesday, 27 July 2010 and resulted in a real frenzy amongst avid gamers, who rushed to grab an early copy.

However, as it all too familiar these days, not everyone is willing to pay in order to play the game and many would rather illegally download it off the Internet. “Apparently, there are a flood of torrents where gamers can download purportedly pirated versions of SC2. While your less ethical gamer might cheer this news, you might be less pleased to find out that some of the SC2 torrents appear to bring along a side order of malware,” Andrew Brandt, a threat researcher at Webroot, warns.

One such example is a new variant of the notorious ZeuS trojan, which is being touted as a StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty loader. Game loaders are custom pieces of software, which are used to bypass various DRM protections and allow non-genuine copies to run.

ZeuS, also known as Zbot, is an information stealing trojan, that is commonly used by cyber crooks to steal online banking accounts, credit card details and other credentials. The malware is one of the primary tools used to perform bank fraud over the Internet.

As with most things that manage to attract the interest of a lot of people, cyber criminals were pretty fast to leverage StarCraft II's popularity. A day after the official launch, Microsoft was already reporting that pirated versions of the game carried various pieces of malware. “[...] If you want a copy of the game, just go out and buy it. It may not be the most thrifty use of your money, but it’s the ethical thing to do, and the safest way to get [one],” Brandt advises.

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