gamers
Gaming is a multi-billion pound industry with millions of players across the globe. With this volume of users and money sloshing around, it’s inevitable that hackers and criminals come calling. Kaspersky Lab currently know of more than 4.6 million pieces of gaming-focused malware and that’s only set to rise.
This is only exacerbated by the fact that when we play games, we lower our (normally reasonable) defences and it’s this behaviour that hackers can manipulate. This may seem strange, but there’s a scientific answer.
Frank Schwab, a professor of media psychology at the University of Würzburg explains: “Our behaviour changes when we enter “gaming mode”. Computer gaming speaks to both our emotional and our rational-cognitive system. While we react very differently to each game, they all influence our experience and our real-life behaviour,”
“Gamers tend to have difficulties turning off the feelings of success — and possibly also of omnipotence — they achieve in the game world in subsequent real-life situations. This can lead to risky online behaviour, with players searching for cheats on illegal websites, for example.”
Yet another issue is that many gamers actually turn off their antivirus software in order to get every drop of performance out of their systems. This leads to all sorts of problems further down the line but it’s something that continues to happen to this day (even with powerful, multi-core PC systems).
All it takes is for a user to be ‘duped’ into downloading and installing a piece of malicious software. These are usually disguised as innocent tools or screen-savers that people want to use on their computer. Once installed, the code rummages through the games in users computer and transfers the account over to the criminals hands. The next time the player logs in, their account will have either been closed, deleted or transferred to another player or account.
But why exactly are hackers and criminals after gamers? Well, one of the main reasons is that players will often pour hundreds of hours building their characters, and these sorts of accounts become a valuable asset for criminals to sell to other gamers, desperate to advance. These are stolen using malicious malware and social engineering and then sold to the highest bidder on underground internet forums.
Another issue is that it’s becoming increasingly common for player accounts to have credit card details stored on their profile (to purchase in game items.) This is another item that cyber-criminals desire, and will usually check for after an account has been hijacked.
@steam_games i contacted support about my account being hacked/ stolen and its taking forever for them to get back to me! help!
— Jonathan Ledbetter (@jldarkspider) December 16, 2014
So, if you’re concerned by these sorts of issues, here’s four tips to make sure you stay protected:
- Be wary of unsolicited emails offering free in-game items or credit (remember the golden rule: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!)
- Always, always, always check the URL of a site you’re sent to – if it’s unfamiliar or looks wrong, leave immediately!
- Use strong and unique passwords. The majority of accounts hijacked last year had poor passwords. You can always download a password manager if you don’t want to remember everything.
- Don’t turn off your anti-virus protection! Also note: Kaspersky users have a specific ‘gaming mode‘ that relieves pressure on the system so that you get the most out of your PC but still remain protected!
What tips do you have for your fellow gamers? Let us know in the comments!
