Since the release of Call of Duty: Warzone over a year ago, almost half a million hackers have been banned thanks to the developers' continuous efforts to put an end to cheating in the battle royale title. The game’s security teams regularly issue large-scale ban waves, some of which can even occasionally affect popular streamers.
Last September, Activision teams issued another massive ban wave in Warzone, attempting to block large quantities of cheaters at once. It appears that the reason for that particular effort was a popular piece of cheat software called EngineOwning, which was detected on over 20,000 accounts. Interestingly, this included a popular streamer named Wagnificent, who received a ban during live gameplay. According to sources, there was no mistake in issuing that particular permanent suspension.
Convinced that there’s no place for cheating in Call of Duty: Warzone, developers have recently reported on their results in the ongoing war against hackers. The battle royale game released over a year ago, and during that time, over 475,000 cheaters were banned permanently. Since February alone, developers have issued seven massive ban waves, with the latest one taking place on Sunday. Apart from such large-scale efforts, security teams also tend to ban disclosed cheaters on a daily basis using an individual approach, reacting to player reports or software detection. Currently, developers are mostly focusing on blocking repeat offenders and preventing them from purchasing new accounts on the black market. Although Call of Duty development and security teams do not reveal their methods in specific detail, they do confirm that hardware bans are being issued to such serial cheaters.
Quite recently, Activision shared another report detailing a malware campaign launched by cheat providers in order to infect players’ computers. After downloading suspicious cheat applications, Warzone fans were becoming vulnerable to fraudulent code, which was able to download and install additional malware on gaming PCs. According to sources, players were specifically chosen as targets of that particular campaign as they generally possess powerful rigs, which malefactors planned to use to mine cryptocurrency.
Players regularly report on hackers in the game, and it looks like Activision, to its credit, is taking this issue very seriously. Half a million blocked accounts is a huge number, which clearly indicates that security teams are not taking the problem lying down. Hopefully, more efficient anti-cheat solutions will also be introduced to Warzone. That’ll help to immediately detect and ban fraudulent accounts before they can ruin things for everyone else.
Source: Call of Duty