Pirates who have downloaded one of the most popular torrent files of this week’s big game release Watch Dogs – ironically, themed around computer hacking – have come in for an unpleasant surprise, reports gaming site Gamecrastinate.The game, whose official release is May 26th, was pirated using various software, but one of the most popular “torrent” files – often used to pirate large files such as games – came with an unwelcome stowaway in the form of malware, according to Slashgear.“Oh, the irony,” commented Slashgear’s Chris Davies on Twitter.Fans who had downloaded the SKIDROW version of the game found that a file entitled Winlogon.exe was consuming 25% of their computer’s power, reportedly mining the cryptocurrency Bitcoin for unknown criminals, according to Slashgear.The irony comes from the fact that the game itself is themed around hacking.Maker Ubisoft warns gamers to “Prepare for a reality you may not be aware of,” and describes the game as allowing users to enter a world “where a hacker uses a hi-tech city as a weapon.” Gamecrastinate, which originally reported the attack, said that thousands of users had been affected by downloading the pre-release torrent, and suffered effects such as blue-screen crashes, large power consumption and an unstable computer.

Gamecrastinate’s Peter Downey commented, “the latest trend in viruses is secret Bitcoin miners, and it seems that somebody jumped on the Watch Dogs hype-train to make some quick coin.Seems almost fitting considering the theme of the game, though the irony is probably not as entertaining if you’ve fallen victim to the hack.” describes its appearance in the hours before the game’s release as a “get rich quick scheme”.bitcoin haendlerThe highly anticipated game is themed around a virtual city where players hack into victims’ smartphones and into the CCTV cameras that surround them,, according to Ubisoft.bitcoin the honey badger of moneyUbisoft has not commented on the adverse effects of the illegal torrent of the game.watch dogs bitcoin virus

“We are seeing tremendous excitement for the new Watch Dogs game,” said Michael van den Berg, vice president of Merchandising at GameStop International, in a pre-release statement.“In fact, Watch Dogs is the highest pre-ordered next-generation console game to date.It is on track to be one of the top selling video games across all consoles in 2014.” The PC gaming community is well used to malware attacks, whether delivered as game “cheats” or as full games.compile bitcoin in linuxA large number of pirate games carry some form of malware, and some reports have claimed that up to 90% of such “add-on” software carries malware.ethereum gatewayHere are a few tips to avoid infection.bitcoin global transaction ledgerGames Clever pirate adds Bitcoin miner to Watch Dogs torrent By Matthew Humphries 05.26.2014 :: 9:03AM EDT @mthwgeek With the imminent release of any high profile video game, there inevitably are a number of pirate copies made available through torrents on peer-to-peer networks.

Choosing to download one of these illegal copies of a game comes with a lot of risk on the part of the downloader.If you’re lucky, you get a clean version of the game, but more often than not there’s malware attached.In the case of Watch Dogs, which is officially released tomorrow, one pirate has decided to use the game for a get rich quick scheme.Their torrent version, known as the Skidrow release, bundles with it a hidden Bitcoin miner virus.Anyone attempting to run the game from this torrent will also activate the Bitcoin miner on their PC, and in turn start generating Bitcoin for whoever added the miner to this release.The side effect for the user is a big chunk of CPU time dedicated to mining Bitcoin for someone else and no actual guarantee the game will work.That means more heat and power use, and an unstable PC in some cases.Your PC is also running a virus, so who knows what else it will be susceptible to running in the future.There are apparently two versions of the Skidrow releases of Watch Dogs–the real one and a fake one which includes the Bitcoin miner virus.

But rather than trying to find the torrent without the virus attached, why not go and purchase the game instead.That way you won’t be risking a virus and actually paying the developer for their years of hard work producing the game.Tens of thousands of 'Watch Dogs' pirates ENSLAVED by Bitcoin botmaster Watch Dogs fans targeted for access to their juicy GPUs Tens of thousands of pirate gamers have been enslaved in a Bitcoin botnet after downloading a cracked copy of popular game Watch Dogs.A torrent of the infected title, which supposedly has had its copy-protection removed, had almost 40,000 active users (seeders and leechers) and was downloaded a further 18,440 times on 23 May on one site alone.Pirates reported on internet forums that the torrent package masquerading under the popular torrent brand SkidRow had quietly installed a Bitcoin miner along with a working copy of the game.The Windows miner ran via two executables installed in the folder AppData\Roaming\OaPja and would noticeably slow down lower performance machines sucking up to a quarter of CPU power.

Most sources have removed the offending torrent.Analysis has yet to be done to determine the location or identities of actors behind the attack.Gamers were choice targets for Bitcoin mining malefactors because they often ran high-end graphical processing units (GPUs) and shunned resource-draining anti-virus platforms."If you happen to download cracked games via Torrent or other P2P sharing services, chances are that you may become a victim of [a] lucrative trojan bundled with a genuine GPU miner," BitDefender chief strategist Catalin Cosoi said of an early Bitcoin miner that targeted gamers."We advise you to start checking your system for signs of infection, especially if you are constantly losing frames-per-second."Using stolen dispersed compute resources was one of the few ways punters could make decent cash by crunching the increasingly difficult mathematical algorithms required to earn Bitcoins.Crims have in recent years foisted the compute-intensive Bitcoin miners in a host of attacks targeting valuable high-end GPUs right down to ludicrously slow digital video recorders.