If you are the type of degenerate who feels the need to cheat at a free online card game like Hearthstone, then you probably deserve whatever viruses or malware you get out of it, but technology security company Symantec Corp has decided to issue a warning anyway about the shady nature of many Hearthstone cheat programs.

According to Symantec, out of the many types of Hearthstone cheat software, none are completely safe to use. This includes programs that claim to earn users free gold and arcane dust, which are used for purchasing in-game items and services and crafting specific Hearthstone cards, respectively.

“Such applications are a total scam; they do not work,” said Symantec Threat Intelligence Officer Lionel Payet.

Payet noted that Symantec had discovered a gold and arcane dust program that secretly contains the Trojan.Coinbitclip malware, which can be used to steal an unweary user’s Bitcoins.

“Because Bitcoin addresses are long and include random characters, many users who mine Bitcoins use a clipboard to facilitate the process,” Payet explained.

“Trojan.Coinbitclip hijacks the user’s clipboard and replaces the user’s Bitcoin address with one from its own list—this is how the malware steals someone’s Bitcoin. The sample we have observed has 10,000 Bitcoin addresses in its body. The Trojan selects an address from the list that most closely resembles the address it is replacing.”

More reasons why you shouldn’t cheat

Gold and dust programs are not the only Hearthstone cheats with malware hidden inside. Deck tracking software, which is sort of the Hearthstone equivalent to card counting, is also not to be trusted, says Payet.

Deck tracking software is used to keep track of what cards a player has and has not drawn yet, along with other types of information, and it falls into a gray area in terms of whether or not it can really be considered cheating. However, it still carries the risk of containing malware.

“Cybercriminals have released their own malicious deck tracker add-ons,” Payet said. “As Blizzard doesn’t support these tools, they are as susceptible to malware as any other third-party modification in the game.”

“In December 2015, Symantec saw that attackers disguised Backdoor.Breut as one of these add-ons by using the file name Hearthstone Deck Tracker.exe. This threat is capable of opening a back door, recording from the webcam, logging key strokes, and stealing passwords.”

Aside from keeping your antivirus software up to date, Payet says that the best way to avoid malware from third-party Hearthstone programs is not to download them in the first place.

In other words, git gud, noob.

Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment Inc