ps2

Nostalgic gamers wanting a little old-school action on the PC (without having to dig out the console) may want to steer clear of a recently-released PlayStation 2 emulator touted to be “far superior to all other PS2 Emulators released before it.”

Chris Boyd of Sunbelt Software reports that web surfers should always be wary of “free applications” on the Internet, however the post focused on this particular emulator currently residing on various websites including Appzkeygen(dot)com and movieutilitesonline(dot)com .

Called Play 2 Emulator, the PS2 program comes in three flavors: “crack,” “keygen,” and “serial.” Apparently– but not surprisingly– the files aren’t emulators at all, but something more sinister.

“A pair of files will be dropped onto your PC, including a randomly named executable in the Windows directory and xpysys.dll in your System32 Folder,” Boyd reports. “You’ve actually wound up with Trojan-Downloader.Win32.CodecPack.2GCash.Gen.”

He went on to explain that this particular trojan has been used in everything from “fake codec scams to rogue AV hijacks in previous months, and is probably going to stick around for quite some time.” He also added that, in some cases, infected surfers have reported rogue anti-virus programs appearing after acquiring the trojan.