Online Gaming Websites Target 3.4 Million Malware Attacks Everyday

According to the security firm Kaspersky Lab cybercrooks execute around more than 3.4 million malware attacks per day targeting online games to steal login credentials and in-games from popular games, as reported by ITP on 10th October 2010.

Kaspersky further stated that the most prevalent form of attack targeting games is phishing e-mails that try to steal login data, along with Trojans that also target login details. According to Kaspersky it has recorded of over 1.2 million Trojans that attack popular gaming websites.

The above mentioned report is substantiated by the fact that games are nowadays a bigger attraction than e-mails and a latest Nielsen study (an audience measurement system) found that, in June 2010, netizens spent more time in playing online games with a rate of 10.2% rather than checking e-mails or any other similar web content (8.3%).

Supporting Kaspersky Lab report, another security vendor Avast Software has also raised warning regarding gaming websites that distribute malware to users' computer.

To alert netizens, security firm Avast has unveiled six gaming websites namely Games-digest.com, Gamefactoryinteractive.com, anywhere-games.com, Mariogamesplay.com, galacticflashgames.com, and towerofdefense.com that were circulating malware and were found to be infected.

On the other hand, security experts stated that the above mentioned gaming websites unveiled by Avast are the least infected websites as compared to other gaming websites on the Internet.

Commenting on the issue, Ondrej Vlcek, Chief Technical Officer at Avast Software stated that the online gamers were a vulnerable target for cybercriminals as it was assumed that they were more interested in games and were least bothered about the security of their system. Since the gaming industry is growing continuously, cybercrooks will certainly develop new and advanced techniques to attack this massive gaming group, as reported by Avast on 7th Oct. 2010.

To protect netizens from malware attacks security experts has strongly recommended that users who want to play online games should run their anti-spyware protection or anti-virus all the time. Besides, they must always keep their anti-virus applications fully updated and should not download websites through free websites as this is the easiest method to spread malware.

Related article: Online Card Fraud Shows Greater Tendency Than Chip and Pin

» SPAMfighter News - 10/16/2010