HackerWars Virus Guide

Three guides covering everything that matters about virus income and DDoS in HackerWars.io. Rates, formulas, and tactics derived from collection data, legacy source code, and live R70 experiments.

Latest: May 2026 — spam uses RAM, not CPU (dev-confirmed 2019 fork change). Clan-points multiplier table located in legacy source. Noob Penalty now PvP-only. All three guides updated.

Start here. What viruses do, how each type earns, and the mechanics that determine your take.

The 4 virus types (warez, spam, miner, ddos)
Software requirements per type
Same-type stacking penalty
Collector and version multipliers
BONUS chance, snapshots, DDoS wipes

Which virus to use, when, and why. Per-target decisions backed by base rates and crossover thresholds.

Confirmed base rates for all three earner types
Dynamic BTC scaling for miners
Warez vs Spam vs Miner crossovers
Quick-reference table by server type
Clan-cluster strategy (corrected model)

How attack power is calculated, mission timing, damage caps, and what changes when targeting players.

Power formula (attacker + slaves)
Mission timing & recurrence rule
Hardware damage tiers and caps
Clan-points multiplier table (1×–10×)
Attacking VPCs and pre-fight tactics

Headline Findings

Warez — $3.00/Mbit/hr
Uses NET bandwidth. Wins on 500+ Mbit servers.

Spam — $0.0501/MB/hr (~$50.10/GB/hr)
Uses RAM (fork change since 2019). 8.2 GB tier wins; low-RAM NPCs are a trap.

Miner — $0.1004/MHz/hr (~$100.40/GHz/hr)
Uses CPU. Wins on 8 GHz NPCs and high-CPU VPCs and clan servers.