Dozens of malicious wallpapers found on Steam Workshop: gamers’ accounts at risk

Since late 2025, malware has been spreading rapidly through the Steam Workshop, the gaming platform's built-in service for players to create and share custom content. The attackers are primarily targeting gamers in China and Russia.

Since late 2025, malware has been spreading rapidly through the Steam Workshop, the gaming platform’s built-in service for players to create and share custom content. The attackers are primarily targeting gamers in China and Russia, aiming to hijack their accounts. To pull this off, they are exploiting Wallpaper Engine – a popular live wallpaper app available on Steam – specifically leveraging its Workshop sharing feature. The malware is hidden inside the wallpaper packages users share with one another.

Running one of these compromised wallpapers can lead to a stolen Steam account or leave the victim’s system infected with backdoors or crypto miners. What is Wallpaper Engine? Wallpaper Engine is an app that allows you to put animated wallpapers on your desktop. It’s available for both Windows and Android, though our investigation focused strictly on the Windows version.