Gamers targeted by cybercriminals

Gamers are targeted by cybercriminals now more than ever. Cases of theft of digital currencies and in-game items, for example, are rising continuously. The security software manufacturer Eset outlines the fraudsters' attack routes so that players can take the best possible precautions to protect themselves from these dangers.

1. DDoS attacks cripple game servers: "Game Over" for online gamers
Denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are often used to cripple a website or web service. The goal is to flood the web server with a flood of requests and thus with so much traffic that it "collapses" and has to go offline. This also ends the gaming fun for online gamers, because without accessible gaming servers, many popular games do not work.
A number of hacktivist groups such as Lizard Squad have frequently launched attacks in the past, primarily against gaming services. Probably the most prominent incident in this context is the attack on the online services "Sony PlayStation Network" and "Microsoft Xbox Live" at Christmas 2014, which took them completely out of service. Thousands of gamers could no longer access both services.

2. data theft through fake websites
Malware is foisted on users on all sorts of websites. Not only on specially created fake sites, but also on legitimate websites of reputable companies, with the aim of ripping off the data of unsuspecting users.
According to Forbes, Amazon's live streaming portal Twitch was infected with malware in March 2015. More often, however, attackers try to directly infect users with malware without their knowledge via manipulated pages in order to steal their login data and spread their malware to other computers. At the beginning of the year, for example, malicious code was distributed via a fake Steam page. Recently, malware was also discovered in seemingly legitimate games like Cowboy Adventure and Jump Chess.

3. to the money collar about ransomware & scareware
In March of this year, cybercriminals infected gaming computers with ransomware. Users had to watch idly as their saved games became unusable. Once infected, the malware specifically searched for games on the PC and encrypted the files. The victim had to pay at least 500 US dollars in Bitcoins in exchange for this data. According to various reports, around 40 games were affected, including very popular games such as "Call of Duty", "World of Warcraft", "Minecraft" or "World of Tanks".
Attackers also try to get rich via scareware apps. Eset writes that they recently discovered 33 Minecraft apps infected with scareware in the Google Play Store. In this case, the apps pretend to be cheats for the game and falsely claim that the user's computer is infected with malware. The problem could be eliminated - by activating an SMS. An expensive undertaking, because the "premium service" offered in the truest sense of the word costs the user around CHF 5 per week.

4. passwords at any price
Internet criminals are particularly interested in passwords and login data. Simple password guessing is a common way to do this. However, cybercriminals also rely on so-called brute force attacks and try to crack the codes by using a password library. Keystroke logging, in which keystrokes are recorded, is also a popular ploy.

5. anything goes with social engineering
Attackers like to play social engineering techniques like phishing to spy on their victims and then attack them. First they spy on Twitter or Facebook profiles, then they send a targeted phishing email that directs the user to fake websites. Or they send a malware-infected attachment in the email itself.
Steam users had to find this out painfully last November, when they opened the free screensaver in the attachment of a phishing email and thus downloaded a Trojan onto their computer.

Conclusion

In order to close the aforementioned gateways in the best possible way, extreme caution must be exercised on the Internet. Security solutions also provide additional security.