An unofficial Pokémon card game with NFTs attracted players with pocket monsters. However, it recently turned out to be a trap set by hackers. Because when downloading, you don’t receive a game, but something completely different.
What kind of “game” is it? A Pokémon Card Game initially seemed to be an NFT game with the popular monsters. This is an unofficial game, not to be confused with the official card game “Pokémon TCG Online”.
However, on January 6, 2023, it was revealed: It is actually not a game at all, but a trap set by hackers on the internet to gain access to other people’s computers.
Here you can see a real game on Steam that is reminiscent of Pokémon:
Instead of Pikachu, there is malware
What is the game really? If you click on the button “Play on PC” on the website of the alleged Pokémon game, you download malware. Instead of a game, a tool called NetSupport RAT is hidden in the data.
This is remote control software that hackers can then use to view your private user data and manipulate the PC so that further cyber attacks can be carried out more easily.
What looked so real about the game? The fake game appeared largely fine at first glance:
- There was a website for the game that looked quite real.
- There was also a marketplace where you could supposedly request and sell Pokémon Card NFTs.
- The downloaded data had a game icon and the file information was also said to have looked convincing.
A naive player might not have noticed that the game does not consist of any real game files and that there are also no NFTs for sale.
Here you can read what NFTs are and why they have been so frequently found in the gaming sector lately.
How was the trap recognized? On the website, a cybersecurity company called ASEC published an article on January 6, 2023, in which it exposed the false Pokémon game as a hacker trap.
On ASEC’s site, you can also see which pages of the fake game were identified as phishing pages and how the hackers’ malware works.
This is not the first unofficial Pokémon NFT Game that brings problems: Company intends to bring a Pokémon game with NFTs and suggests they have the okay from Nintendo – Serious mistake
