Garry

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Garry?s Mod servers hit with virus infection. It can be removed but beware when connecting.

19 Apr 2014  by   Paul Younger

 

 

This evening players of Garry?s mod were greeted with inexplicable coughing messages and it?s since transpired there is server and client infecting virus.

 

For the past couple of hours an on-going thread highlighting the problem has been active on the Facepunch forums as players attempted to figure out exactly what was going on.

 

It has transpired that by connecting to an infected server, the client also becomes infected and a batch file has been written that should sort the problem out for both client and servers. However, it sounds like if you reconnect to an infected server the cycle continues. Infected servers are showing up with a prefix of ?!!!? so those should be avoided.

 

Server admins should give this piece of code a run as posted by destroyer6171 who says it helped clean up his server. There?s some confusion as to what the infection actually does but from all accounts it is simply spamming servers with *cough* and is not stealing passwords or anything as disastrous as that despite some reports from players saying their Steam Wallets have been cleared out.

 

To be on the safe side,  give the game a miss for a day or so if you?ve avoided infection. There will likely be more information from the Garry?s Mod team shortly but palyers can be reinfected from a server even if it?s been removed. Damn annoying.

 

http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/garrys-mod-servers-hit-virus-infection-can-removed-beware-connecting

 

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Bit more detail from Reddit:

 

The virus works by forcing a server to download a .dll file to the computer, which then forces the users steam name to change to VINH'LL FIX IT and spam cough cough to friends and players. Visiting other servers will force that server to download it to more people, thus spreading across the game. Currently, it just seems to spam messages, but this method could be abused to download actual viruses and destroy computers.

Beware, play with caution until further notice.

 

http://redd.it/23evk0

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Pretty funny. A virus that gives the server a cold. :laugh:

[theyarecomingforyou]

Pretty funny. A virus that gives the server a cold. :laugh:

Indeed. It's better this than a malicious virus and hopefully the vector for infection will be eliminated to prevent this happening again.