Specialists in IT security audits of the Kaspersky security firm recently published a report that talks about the cybercriminals’ growing interest in attacking the companies that are part of the video game industry.
Experts found that, just this year, threat
actors have launched more than 10 billion of credential-stuffing
attacks against online gaming platforms and developer websites. Other attacks
that are frequently presented against these websites are SQL injection, local
files inclusion, among others.
“One of the possible reasons that
cybercriminals are showing this behavior is because gamers are a demographic
group that has no problem investing money to get items to use online games,
which represents profits for hackers”, the IT security audits experts mentioned.
Another of the malicious activities performed
by hackers is the distribution of malware through compromised video games. The
report mentions that over the past year, more than 950,000 users were infected
with malware using fake copies of games like Minecraft, The Sims, among
others.
According to the IT security audits specialists,
the cybercriminals also try to lure users to download malicious files by
passing them through video game test versions next to being released, such as
FIFA 20, Borderlands 3, among other popular developments.
In addition to downloading fake versions of
video games, experts from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS)
mention that hackers also try to deploy malware in fake versions of TV shows,
movies and pirate software.
“Since these downloads are made by simple
leisure, people do not pay due attention to what they are installing on their
devices, it is common for infections to spread when a user does not have the
relevant security measures”, mentioned the experts. “We ask all users
to stay alert and avoid at all costs potentially risky software download
platforms; Installing some antivirus solution and performing security patches
on your devices can also help prevent a serious malware infection” experts
conclude.
