Cities Skylines Devs Warn Players Over Malware Riddled Mods!

Cities Skylines is hardly a new game. It is, in fact, very nearly 6-years-old. Coming out not too long after EA’s god-awful Sim City reboot, however, it is, without a doubt, one of the vest city-building simulators currently available and if you haven’t played it yet, it’s well worth a try. – With the game being a fair bit old now, however, many of its community has started to turn its attention towards mods in order to attempt to keep it fresh and interesting. Following a report via Eurogamer, however, Cities Skylines developers have issued an official warning as one major modder has been releasing projects apparently riddled with malware!

Cities Skylines Warns of Malware Riddled Mods

Following the report, it has been found that a somewhat popular mod creator, aptly carrying the username ‘Chaos’, has quietly added an auto-update feature to many of their extensive mod downloads for Cities Skylines. While this is sometimes mandatory or snuck in the backdoor, the bottom line is that it has been found that this has effectively been utilised to quietly download malware onto the user’s system. – While the exact nature of the malware has not been confirmed, the overwhelming theory is that it contained either keylogging or cryptocurrency-based software. Stuff you clearly do not want on your gaming PC!

With over 35,000 confirmed downloads, however, this is quite a big problem!

“Malicious code has been found in mods published by an author using the names Holy Water and Chaos. These mods have been “forks” (modified and reuploaded versions) of popular mods from well-known creators (e.g. Harmony, Network Extensions, Traffic Manager: President Edition). Several (but not all) of these mods have been removed from the Steam Workshop and the author’s account is currently suspended.

We recommend in the strongest possible terms that you unsubscribe from all items published by this author and do not subscribe, download, or install any mods, from any source, that may be published by this individual in future.”

Remove As Soon As Possible!

Although the creator of these mods has been removed from Steam, as well as any links or referrals to their downloads, if you have any Cities Skylines files created by this user, you are clearly advised to remove them from your system as soon as possible. In addition, a very thorough virus scan would likely be more than a little advantageous to the security of your system. – For as amazing as 99% of the mod community is, however, there will always be this 1% that has to spoil the experience!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!