Video gamers face malware deluge

[crawlerbasher]

This was taken from the bbc news website.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8338227.stm

Players of online games are increasingly becoming the target of virus writers, reveals research.

More and more malicious programs are being written to steal the login credentials of popular online games.

The Microsoft research revealed a family of malicious programs aimed at titles such as Lineage, World of Warcraft, Maple Story and many others.

Hijacked accounts are plundered for in-game booty or sold on through the net's underground market places.

Loot and booty

Cliff Evans, head of security at Microsoft UK, said its latest look at the software threats facing Windows revealed a strong growth in one family of malicious programs known as taterf.

In the last six months, Microsoft has seen more than 4.9m infections caused by Taterf - a figure up 156% on the total seen in the last six months of 2008.

Mr Evans said the virus used a variety of tricks to steal login names and passwords for the most popular online games.

"It's all about getting login credentials," he said. "The question is what might they do with those credentials."

"They might sell them because they are worth something," he said. "By using them they can obtain certain things within the game or they can buy services through some sort of market place."

"There's clearly a financial angle to it that makes it worthwhile," he said.

Steven Davis, chief of game security firm Secure Play, said: "Online game account information has been an increasingly lucrative target for crooks as they can steal the account or loot game currency."

TATERF TARGETS
Rainbow Island
Cabal Online
A Chinese Odyssey
Hao Fang Battle Net
Lineage
Gamania
MapleStory
qqgame
Legend of Mir
World Of Warcraft
"Crooks also use stolen credit cards for gold farming which has become a much more serious problem," he said. "They are attacking games because it is easy and there is no real interest from law enforcement."

Mr Evans from Microsoft said gamers could follow some simple steps to avoid having their account stolen.

"Never log onto a game account unless you are on a machine that you trust," he said. "And never download cheats or cracks from websites."

Version control

Other trends revealed in the research were a move away from fake security software aka scareware. Statistics gathered by Microsoft show that the number of machines it found with such programs installed had fallen from 16.8 million machines to 13.4 million.

By contrast, said Mr Evans, worms that travel networks independently looking for victims were seeing a resurgence. Such self-guided programs were now the second biggest security threat to Windows users, he said.

Mr Evans said the trends revealed in the survey gave grounds for hope.

"At the moment we're holding things at bay," he said. "There's constant change in terms of the cyber criminals changing their tactics. It's a question of keeping on top of that."

Every significant update of Windows or new version showed a decrease in the number of infections per thousand machines, said Mr Evans.

The first version of Windows XP had about 35 infections for every 1,000 machines scanned, said Mr Evans. By contrast, he said, only 4 in every 1,000 of the machines running the first version of Vista needed disinfecting.

The statistics cover the first six months of 2009 and data comes from several sources.

It includes Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal tool which runs on 450 million machines worldwide; 100 million machines using Windows Live One Care, malicious webpages scanned by search engine Bing and corporate security services run by Microsoft.

[Miraun]

TATERF TARGETS
Rainbow Island
Cabal Online
A Chinese Odyssey
Hao Fang Battle Net
Lineage
Gamania
MapleStory
qqgame
Legend of Mir
World Of Warcraft

I have my own game?

[Pendulum]

I'ts called QQ Game.

[RosalynSable]

TATERF TARGETS
Rainbow Island
Cabal Online
A Chinese Odyssey
Hao Fang Battle Net
Lineage
Gamania
MapleStory
qqgame
Legend of Mir
World Of Warcraft

I have my own game?

Yah, you go around telling people how much better you are than them. The high score is eleventy bajillion and held by "MIR" and it states under it "you can't ever beat this because I'm just that much better than you." And don't even get me started on the long drawn out trading mini-quest involving unsavory photos of the main character's ex girlfriend.

[Aeric]

And don't even get me started on the long drawn out trading mini-quest involving unsavory photos of the main character's ex girlfriend.

Haha, Rosalyn with the zinger.



...how mithra.



Wait... Is this ethical?

[Stefanos]

I have my own game?

I'ts called QQ Game.

[Eracle]

SE, please introduce Barmalware/Barmalwara to WHM. THIS WILL MAKE WHM BETTER THAN RDM AGAIN!!!!!111two4

[Xantavia]

So, if Microsoft is so worried about malware/hacks of peoples computers, is that why the forcefully added a plug-in to firefox to give it a gaping hole like IE?

[ToraZalinto]

I have no such plug in. O_o
~Tora

[Tahngarthor]

So, if Microsoft is so worried about malware/hacks of peoples computers, is that why the forcefully added a plug-in to firefox to give it a gaping hole like IE?

What hole are you referring to? IE Tab? No one's forcing you to use that.

[Xantavia]

So, if Microsoft is so worried about malware/hacks of peoples computers, is that why the forcefully added a plug-in to firefox to give it a gaping hole like IE?

What hole are you referring to? IE Tab? No one's forcing you to use that.

Look under plug-ins if using firefox. It was windows presentation foundation. At the time it was installed (without asking to install it) you were unable to disable this function. The good folks at mozilla had to do a quick fix to turn it off.

[Tahngarthor]

Ah yes, I see it but it's already disabled. What's it "supposed" to be for?

[Eracle]

FFFFFUUUUUUUUU- how did I miss this!?

I always found it funny how when computers start going online a giant industry erupts to 'protect' computers from hackers/malware/viruses/etc. Especially when some of the best protection is free.

[Laraul]

FFFFFUUUUUUUUU- how did I miss this!?

I always found it funny how when computers start going online a giant industry erupts to 'protect' computers from hackers/malware/viruses/etc. Especially when some of the best protection is free.

This is only true in the Windows world. You still rarely find malware targeted at other platforms. IE is just as safe as Firefox. Dillusioning yourself that IE is less secure is foolish.

I personally do not bother with antivirus software or software firewalls. They are nothing but a hinderance. There is still much ignorance about malware and AV software. When I state that Noscript is indeed itself made from JavaScript people don't want to acknowledge it. People don't understand what a firewall is. People don't understand how false infomation is as bad as any malicious piece of software. These reasons why malware is such a problem.

[Tahngarthor]

IE is just as safe as Firefox. Dillusioning yourself that IE is less secure is foolish.

IE is not just as safe as *insert any other browser here* simply because of the fact that it is the most targeted by malware authors and hackers. Ignoring all security extensions and software like ad-aware, virus scanners, no-script and ad-block, you're far more likely to get attacked while using IE than any other.

And what noScript is made of has no relevance as to its usefulness in protecting yourself from threats. It's not acknowledged because it has little meaning, not because it's not true.

Please stop disillusioning people into thinking that they shouldn't have such security software. It is downright foolhardy to suggest that people don't need antivirus or other malware defense software. maybe YOU have perfect common sense and intuition but the average user does not- These protections are designed for people who may not be able to tell what's safe and what's not.