Kaspersky: Anime Wallpapers on Steam Spread
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- Kaspersky identified dozens of malicious Wallpaper Engine packages on Steam Workshop, many disguised as animated wallpapers featuring anime female characters, with some packages recording thousands to tens of thousands of downloads.
- The malware stole Steam credentials, hijacked active sessions, and deployed Lumma and Vidar infostealers alongside the RenEngine loader to harvest credentials, browser data, and cryptocurrency wallet information.
- Victims were concentrated in China and Russia, with additional infections reported in Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, Vietnam, India, and Canada.
- Researchers said the activity appeared to involve multiple threat actors rather than a single group, with some payloads bundled directly and others hidden inside password-protected archives.
- A 2025 case involved a wallpaper that appeared to launch a legitimate desktop game while secretly installing the DarkKomet backdoor, illustrating how the delivery mechanism chains user trust into compromise.
- Kaspersky researcher Maxim Starodubov warned that trusted platforms like Steam Workshop are being abused to reach large numbers of victims through seemingly harmless content.
- The discovery follows July 2025 reporting by Prodaft on the Steam Early Access game Chemia distributing Hijack Loader, Fickle Stealer, and Vidar, and a March FBI investigation into malware-laden Steam games including Chemia, BlockBlasters, PirateFi, and Tokenova.
Why it matters: Steam Workshop's position as a trusted ecosystem lets attackers scale malware distribution to tens of thousands of installs per package, and the infostealers deployed are specifically built to drain crypto wallets — meaning gamers running animated anime wallpapers face a direct path from aesthetic customization to financial loss, and the multi-actor, multi-country spread signals this is an ongoing supply-chain abuse, not a one-off incident.
