Warning: Your Console May Soon Get Viruses

15 Dec 2009

Yeah, I’m serious.

Community member, Seshan, shared with us on the Bwana.org Forum a disturbing trend that’s occurring within the popular game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Apparently, on the Xbox 360, there is a troubling glitch:

The Modern Warfare 2 Mods in this video are taken on the Xbox360. You can see we are able to have unlimited ammo, call in super airdrops, and we also have unlimited ammo on the AC130. Before anyone asks, yes these do work in ranked games and at this point we will not be allowing users to know how its done. This due to the damage it will cause to the game. This is more of a wake up call to Infinity Ward letting them know both Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2 have been exploited.

The glitch itself is not harmful, but it’s ability is. It self replicates. If you are part of a match that enables this exploit, all future matches you host, will have the same exploit. That, my friends, is the very definition of a virus. Now this particular exploit doesn’t do any permanent damage as most have reported a full power-off will rid you of the “virus”.

This ability is troubling.

Infinity Ward uses matchmaking technology called IWNet. I recently found a similar issue with the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 which found a possible trojan via IWNet. This was later found to be a false positive, but again, this capability is troubling. No game server should offer the ability to drop trojans or allow self replicating glitches. This is bad. This means that your “safe” gaming console could be exploited like any other computer on the internets.

The reason why parents don’t hesitate to give their children consoles is because of this perceived protection against malware. The gaming console is looked at like a VCR or a toaster: It cannot be harmed remotely. Well, those days are gone. Thanks to Infinity Ward, we are seeing the beginnings of a possible new playground for malicious hackers.

Next up: Norton for Xbox 360!!

9 Responses to Warning: Your Console May Soon Get Viruses

eagleofnone

December 16th, 2009 at 2:54 am

man this is whacked. sure maybe you can stay off XBL’s vast internets but PSN and PC are gonna come back and whack at your MW2 gamesave with the free online play that they promote.