As per researchers cyber criminals have been building malicious code written in GDScript (Godot’s Python-like scripting language) calling on some 200 GitHub repositories and more than 220 Stargazer Ghost accounts.

Earlier hackers targeted the open sources gaming platform targeting users of the Godot Gaming Engine and researcher’s spotted that GodLoader would drop different malware to the infected devices mostly in RedLine stealer, and XMRig, a popular cryptojacker.

GodLoader, the researchers further explained, was downloaded at least 17,000 times, which is a rough estimate on the number of infected devices. However, the attack surface is much, much larger.

Check Point argues that in theory, crooks could hide malware in cheats, cracks, or modes, for different Godot-built games. Check Point detected four separate attack waves against developers and gamers between September 12 and October 3, enticing them to download infected tools and games.

Looking at the number of popular games developed with Godot, that would put the attack surface at approximately 1.2 million people.

Hackers delivered the GodLoader malware through the Stargazers Ghost Network, a malware Distribution-as-a-Service (DaaS) that masks its activities using seemingly legitimate GitHub repositories.

Technical Details

Godot does not register a file handler for “.pck” files. This means that a malicious actor always has to ship the Godot runtime together with a .pck file. The user will always have to unpack the runtime together with the .pck to the same location and then execute the runtime.

There is no way for a malicious actor to create a “one click exploit”, barring other OS-level vulnerabilities. If such an OS-level vulnerability were used then Godot would not be a particularly attractive option due to the size of the runtime.