Minecraft | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new campaign targeting Minecraft players via YouTube to spread malware capable of gaining control of victims' systems. The Minecraft-focused malware-as-a-service (MaaS) campaign has been codenamed Weedhack by McAfee Labs, stating the activity has been active since January 2026 and impersonates Minecraft clients and mods to infect users. In all, 3820 unique malicious JAR files and over 240 URLs responsible for distributing the malware have been identified. "This campaign utilizes SEO poisoning and YouTube to generate traffic to these malicious URLs," security researcher Aayush Tyagi said . "We also found two YouTube channels and multiple videos that demonstrate Minecraft Mods and Clients and redirect viewers to these URLs." Central to the campaign is an enterprise-grade dashboard ("weedhack[.]to") that enables customers to view stolen credentials and system information, as well as remotely keep tabs on th...

A new multi-stage malware campaign is targeting Minecraft users with a Java-based malware that employs a distribution-as-service (DaaS) offering called Stargazers Ghost Network . "The campaigns resulted in a multi-stage attack chain targeting Minecraft users specifically," Check Point researchers Jaromír Hořejší and Antonis Terefos said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The malware was impersonating Oringo and Taunahi, which are 'Scripts and macros tools' (aka cheats). Both the first and second stages are developed in Java and can only be executed if the Minecraft runtime is installed on the host machine." The end goal of the attack is to trick players into downloading a Minecraft mod from GitHub and deliver a .NET information stealer with comprehensive data theft capabilities. The campaign was first detected by the cybersecurity company in March 2025. What makes the activity notable is its use of an illicit offering called the Stargazers Ghost...

Minecraft, with over 500 million registered users and 166 million monthly players, faces significant risks from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, threatening server functionality, player experience, and the game’s reputation. Despite the prevalence of DDoS attacks on the game, the majority of incidents go unreported, leaving a gap in awareness and protection. This article explains what happens to a Minecraft server during a DDoS attack and how to protect against such attacks. For an in-depth version of the article,  check out this white paper . When Creepers Breach: What Happens When an Attack Is Successful When a Minecraft server is hit with a DDoS attack, players may have problems with logging in to servers, loading worlds, navigating biomes, using tools, and chatting. They can also experience general lags, disconnections, timeouts, or server crashes. These in-game disruptions can ruin the gaming experience for players while causing financial and reputational losse...