*cough*
By Liam Gilroy on April 28, 2014 at 12:21 pm
Roughly two weeks ago, the ever popular Garry's Mod was victim to a strange new virus. Dubbed the *cough* virus, it utilized an exploit in the Source Engine's file sending to transfer a worm in the form of a dll, which would then change a player's name to VINH'LL FIX IT@@ and then spam *cough* in the chat.
Thankfully, creator of Garry's Mod Garry Newman quickly patched the exploit, as he explained to PC Gamer:
"The worm as I understand it was transferred to the client as a dll, then when it loaded it crashed the client, in the hope that they'd join another server. When they did it downloaded the server's config file and looked for a rcon password." RCON, or "remote console," allows you to control a server remotely. "If it got one, it infected the server by uploading the dll and running it (it didn't need rcon to upload the dll, only to run it). And then the cycle continued."
Naturally Valve also patched the exploit quickly, meaning their own Source games should also be safe to play on now. If you have any other Source based mods however, it might be a good idea to check with the developer before you jump back on – while the *cough* virus was rather benign, it could have been a lot more destructive.
Source: PC Gamer
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