Meccha Chameleon–a multiplayer prop-hunt sport that is been blowing up on Steam lately–seems to have hit its first actual street bump because it launched in early June. As identified by a participant who goes by Feint, among the sport’s player-made maps are principally simply Trojan horses containing malware. Considered one of Feint’s buddies had talked about briefly seeing a command immediate seem whereas they had been downloading the map. Curious, Feint dug into the recordsdata and concluded that the map often called Lazer Tag Zero contained a “malware dropper.”
The map was rapidly pulled from Meccha Chameleon’s Steam Workshop web page after Feint revealed their findings in a Medium article. However the chaos was simply starting. Different malware-filled maps began showing, after which the sport’s official Discord server was hacked.
“Safety was fully breached, the server creator’s account was hijacked, and all admins had been banned, so we won’t take motion from our facet,” Meccha Chameleon creator Lemorion_1224 shared in an auto-translated X submit over the weekend.Â
The information was additionally shared through an replace on the sport’s Steam web page, clarifying that the sport itself wasn’t a safety danger, and will nonetheless be performed safely so long as user-made maps weren’t used. Nonetheless, issues had been wanting rough–the hackers even put up a pretend itemizing for a Meta Quest-compatible model of the sport, which does not exist.
“Presently, a product known as ‘Meccha Chameleon VR’ is offered for preorder on the Meta Quest retailer, however we’ve got not granted any manufacturing permission for it,” Lemorion_1224 defined in an X submit shared early this morning. “We’re at present submitting a request for elimination, so please chorus from buying it. We is not going to deal with any financial points arising from counterfeit merchandise.”
However after a weekend of abject chaos, it appears issues are lastly stabilizing. A couple of hours after the announcement in regards to the pretend Meta Quest product itemizing, Lemorion_1224 revealed {that a} new replace is now stay for the sport.
Mini-update 3.3.1 replaces the Discord hyperlink on the sport’s title display with a hyperlink to the proper server (which is now again within the possession of Mecca Chameleon creators Lemorion_1224 and Haganiero), fixes a bodily collision concern, and maybe most significantly, strengthens virus safety, although it isn’t clear if the problem with player-made map malware has been totally resolved for good.
For now, the most secure wager might be sticking to the sport’s default maps.
