In February 2018, premium flight simulator developer faced massive backlash when a user on Reddit discovered that the installer for their highly popular $100-$140 Airbus A320X add-on contained actual, active malware masquerading as "DRM". 🔍 The Discovery: What Happened?
The extraction tool would if the installer detected specific pirated serial numbers circulating on torrent sites. In February 2018, premium flight simulator developer faced
A user on the r/flightsim subreddit noticed that the FSLabs installer dropped a file named test.exe into the system. A user on the r/flightsim subreddit noticed that
The collected credentials were meant to help the developers trace the identities of "crackers" to hand over to legal authorities. ⚖️ The Verdict: Why It Failed Ethically & Legally The installer was designed to take that dumped
Paying customers were perfectly safe and the file would never run on their machines.
The installer was designed to take that dumped password file, disguise it as a local log file, and send it back to FSLabs' servers.
Following the uproar, FSLabs founder Lefteris Kalamaras posted a public response admitting to the bundle but attempting to justify it as a highly specific anti-piracy measure. The developer claimed:
This block is for site monitoring.