I wish I could play Diablo 2 on a 1920x1080 monitor without it looking like

[Hammerskjold]

This was also back in the days of very unsecure versions of Windows and web browsers, and a real lack of readily available anti-malware resident software. Even visiting a website with a shady banner ad could be enough to infect you with a keylogger. I don't think it was ever specific to maphack, but I do think the people doing random web searches for maphack or similar software would be enough to give them computer STDs.

I agree that while security around that era wasn't helping, there was a few things that was IIRC maphack* specific. Again, just going on my recollection, it was almost similar to what happened with D1 Stu's trainer. (Iirc Stu's original program was a limited, char back up utility, not really a cheating trainer. Yes yes, inb4 it's how you use it etc. ) Except I'm guessing maphack's creator wasn't just doing it for the coding challenge alone.

There was some people who modified an already sketchy program, to definitely include a trojan. Some of the big red flag was 'don't pay for MH, get this version for free!111'. Sounds obvious, but if someone desperately wants something bad enough, it's amazing how fast common sense can be shoved out the window.

* Just so we're on the same page, I'm talking about a specific MH program, that the creator wanted money for. I wouldn't be surprised if you remember hearing the name. It was fairly well known during D2\LoD's heyday.

I doubt I will play D2 again, but the last time I did it was increasingly on SP. And I did have Plug Y for testing builds, and I enabled the 'Realms Only runeword now valid for SP' txt file. I had an earlier version of Median as well. So I'm not exactly a stranger to modded play. (Obvious disclaimer, none of these things were in use when I played realms\multi.)

But I still didn't have MH even for SP use only. Because for myself, it's simply too risky to find out if even the 'genuine ver' is actually as clean as it claims to be.

TLDR ver:

MH has a notoriety that others didn't. Not the good kind.