McAfee: Lua worms target gamers, each other

The language, which was first released in 1994, is widely used for the popular "World of Warcraft," "Garry's Mod," "Illarion" and "Escape from Monkey Island" games, as well as a list of others.

McAfee also said this week that the Lua worms appear to be targeting each other, and were written to find and target other Lua worms.

Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager for McAfee Avert Labs, said today that the malware activity is unique because the worms are targeting each other, aiming to directly compromise user account information and are written in Lua.

"(Worms targeting gamers) is really nothing new. There are a lot of password stealers. But here we're seeing activity directly targeting the accounts," he said. "This instance was one of the first we've seen using Lua - which is interesting because it's specifically used for online games."

The malware could potentially compromise gaming servers that thousands of players are connected to, according to an Avert Labs blog. Home users could be at risk because gaming servers are almost always trusted to install and run programs on client PCs.

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