Mods Accused of Bitcoin Mining, Virus Removed from Steam

Over the past few days, a series of modifications to the strategy game for PC Cities: Skylines It was removed from Steam after users started to fear they contained all kinds of nasty stuff, from keyboard spotters to viruses to bitcoin miners.

The alarm has already been sounded this is NME a story And Next Reddit postHe pointed out that those who downloaded the modifications were banned and that there were serious risks to the user’s computers. as the NME explain the story:

In 2021, a designer called Chaos released a “redesigned” version of a model called Harmony, a vital framework project on which most urban mods depend: Skylines to work.

Chaos has also “redesigned” several popular mods for the game, and has included his own mod of Harmony as a base download – meaning players will have to go and download them for any affiliate mods to work.

However, it has been discovered that an automatic update tool is buried in this version of Harmony, which will allow Chaos to deliver the malware to the devices of anyone who has downloaded it. Other malicious code was used to disrupt the performance of other mods, which in turn caused players to download more Chaos mods as they were announced as solutions to these issues. This was discovered when some affected mods, after receiving reports of slow performance from fans, found the malicious code.

While it is a frightening prospect for any user who has downloaded individual mods, an investigation has been made by Cities: Skylines Developers Colossal Order found that while modifying themselves It didn’t contain anything as dangerous as initially feared, it is still being deleted from Steam. One is because it, allegedly, can leave the door open for downloading “malware”:

The mod “Update from Github” was removed shortly after it appeared in the Workshop. This mode is designed to check and install updates on mods directly from Github, and make changes to existing workshop subscriptions without the user’s knowledge. This completely bypasses the workshop, and to avoid potential abuse (such as downloading malware), the mode has been removed.

And another for…trivial reasons (emphasis mine):

We recently banned some mods from Cities: Skylines Workshop and we want to clear up some of the misinformation surrounding these mods. The mods in question, which have been blocked, are “Network Extensions 3” and “Update from Github”.

No keyboard loggers, viruses, bitcoin miners, or the like were found in the mods on Steam Workshop.

Network Extensions 3, which allegedly contains malware, has been banned due to discrimination against certain Steam users. First, it blocked a short list of Steam users from using the mode, but this was later changed to cause what appears to be buggy gameplay. Banning users or placing specific restrictions on them violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and has resulted in mod bans.

Just to be clear: the mod creator made a list of people they didn’t like, put that list into mode and then made the mod work like crap, but Only for these people.