Original ‘Modern Warfare 2’ servers hit by self-spreading malware

28 July, 2023

The servers for the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are temporarily offline as Activision addresses a self-spreading worm virus attacking players in the game.

Recently, the servers for Modern Warfare 2 as well as Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty Black Ops 1 and 2 were revived, seeing a resurgence of interest in the classic games. This virus was made aware to players about a month ago, with forum posts identifying the offender to be Wacatac.B!ml, and now Activision took action to prevent the malware from reaching any more accounts.

Activision’s announcement does not specify what is the issue that will be investigated, but the Call of Duty community are assuming that it is related to Wacatac.B!ml. In order to protect themselves, players are advised to run an antivirus software to see whether or not the worm virus has infected their system as it is being channelled through hacked lobbies.

One player took the time to analyse the text strings of the malware and said that it had been coded for this version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The strings “User was randomly selected to be a spreader in modded lobbies” and “User was selected to be a host/ignore modded lobbies/join unmodded lobbies only” seem to show how the worm virus generated its successful spread in the game.

Looking forward, the next Call Of Duty game, theorised to be Modern Warfare 3, will be shown off in a “limited-time event” in Warzone. Furthermore, Commander Philip Graves will be a playable Operator as his Shadow Company becomes a major antagonist in the next Call of Duty.

In other gaming news, Payday 3‘s closed beta for PC and Xbox Series X is live on August 2, and players are being randomly selected to sign up.

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