Filipino gamers find crypto mining program in ‘League of Legends’ game client

Filipino gamers found cryptocurrency mining software attached to the Philippine client of the popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game “League of Legends” (LoL).

Several Filipino gamers went on Reddit to share their discovery of the cryptocurrency mining software Coinhive running within their game clients. One of these gamers, under the username u/lestergonzaga, shared screenshots of the software found by a malware detection tool on July 10.

League of Legends-Philippines later published a statement on their website and Facebook page to address gamer concerns.

The statement mentioned that an unauthorized modification of the “League of Legends” game client happened on July 9 at around 2:16 p.m., Philippine time. They explained how the inserted javascript code consumed CPU resources from affected computers to mine crypto like Bitcoin. LoL-Philippines then assured gamers that cyber security engineers have already removed the malicious code earlier today, July 11, at 4:15 a.m.

This incident with the LoL game client is not the first time that Coinhive was used to covertly mine for cryptocurrency. In September 2017, infamous torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay was reported to have used Coinhive to mine the crypto Monero.

Discussion on u/lestergonzaga’s Reddit thread also suggested that Coinhive has infiltrated the Garena+ game client.

Details shared by user NotAnADC, who claimed to have worked as a cybersecurity analyst and part of the team which discovered Coinhive, also suggest the use of similar software that has become prevalent on the internet. JB

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TAGS: Coinhive, crypto mining, Javascript, League of Legends