A streamer battling stage 4 cancer has been scammed to the tune of around $30,000 by a Steam game that concealed cryptodrain malware, and while the game has been removed, it remained online for around three weeks with the malware infecting its code.
As spotted by ResetEra user Atheerios, streamer rastaland, who is suffering from a stage 4 sarcoma (which means the cancer has metastasized to other parts of his body), was tricked into downloading a Steam demo by the name of BlockBlasters, which contained a cryptodrainer.
If you’re not sure what a cryptodrainer is, it’s essentially a malicious piece of software that drains cryptocurrency from users’ wallets (hence the name). As rastaland himself says, the malware drained him for “over $32,000” in creator fees earned through crypto platform pump.fun.
You can see rastaland realizing what’s happened in this clip posted by X user vx-underground. Honestly, I’d recommend against watching it because it’s completely heartbreaking, but if you’d like to get all your ducks in a row, it’s there for you to watch.
As reported by cyber defense blog G Data, BlockBlasters seemingly didn’t contain any malicious code until August 30th, when the cryptodrainer in question was added to the game. G Data’s report also contains a great rundown of how exactly the drainer works and what you can watch out for to avoid being scammed yourself.
G Data points out that this isn’t the first instance of malware being injected into Steam games; other examples include free-to-play survival sims PirateFi and Chemia, both of which were compromised by malicious updates.
All three of the games I’ve mentioned in this article have now been removed from Steam, but according to SteamDB, two people are still playing BlockBlasters on Steam right now. If that’s you and you’re reading this, I’d strongly recommend backing out of the game and deleting it.
As for rastaland, he’s apparently been inundated with support and kind words from his community, and it looks like crypto enthusiast Alex Becker sent the streamer enough money to cover the loss, which is a lovely gesture.
This feels to me like a pretty sobering reminder to be extremely careful when getting involved with anything Web3-related, whatever certain major publishers may tell you. Stay tuned for more.
