{"id":216354,"date":"2025-06-21T06:16:30","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T11:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/1500-minecraft-players-infected-by-java-malware-masquerading-as-game-mods-on-github"},"modified":"2025-06-21T06:16:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T11:16:30","slug":"1500-minecraft-players-infected-by-java-malware-masquerading-as-game-mods-on-github","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/1500-minecraft-players-infected-by-java-malware-masquerading-as-game-mods-on-github","title":{"rendered":"1,500+ Minecraft Players Infected by Java Malware Masquerading as Game Mods on GitHub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/1500-minecraft-players-infected-by-java-malware-masquerading-as-game-mods-on-github2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The campaign is suspected to be the work of a Russian-speaking threat actor owing to the presence of several artifacts written in the Russian language and the timezone of the attacker\u2019s commits (UTC+03:00). It\u2019s estimated that more than 1,500 devices may have fallen prey to the scheme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis case highlights how popular gaming communities can be exploited as effective vectors for malware distribution, emphasizing the importance of caution when downloading third-party content,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Stargazers Ghost Network has been actively distributing this malware, targeting Minecraft players seeking mods to enhance their gameplay. What appeared to be harmless downloads were, in fact, Java-based loaders that deployed two additional stealers, capable of exfiltrating credentials and other sensitive data.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The campaign is suspected to be the work of a Russian-speaking threat actor owing to the presence of several artifacts written in the Russian language and the timezone of the attacker\u2019s commits (UTC+03:00). It\u2019s estimated that more than 1,500 devices may have fallen prey to the scheme. \u201cThis case highlights how popular gaming communities can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}