Category Archives: Gaming threats

Stealing virtual items from videogame characters in massively-multiplayer games, then reselling the items in a quasilegal grey market to other gamers, makes a lot of criminals a lot of ‘IRL’ money.

Fishing for Phishers is a Full-Time Job

February 23, 2011 – 12:30 pm

By Ian Moyse, EMEA Channel Director We seem to take phishing attacks for granted these days, in much the same way that we’ve accepted spam as a natural, and inevitable, by-product of email. Some experts believe that one of the best solutions to thwart phishing attacks is end-user training, but I doubt training alone can [...]

By imoyse | Also posted in Online shopping threats, Passwords, phishing, social engineering, spam | Comments (1)

10 Threats from 2010 We’d Prefer Remain History

January 1, 2011 – 3:32 pm

By Andrew Brandt With 2010 finally behind us, and an unknown number of cyberattacks likely to come in the new year, I thought I’d run down a brief list of the malicious campaigns criminals pulled off last year that I’d really dread to see anyone repeat. Now that they’re in the past, they should stay [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Backdoors, Blackhat SEO, Botnet activity, Destructive behavior, Enterprises, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Keyloggers, Online shopping threats, Passwords, phishing, Phishing Trojans, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, social networks, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Trojans, Website owners | Comments (1)

Game Trojans’ Biggest Tricks in 2010

October 22, 2010 – 1:22 pm

By Andrew Brandt and Curtis Fechner It’s appropriate that this year’s Blizzcon, the two-day celebration of all things World of Warcraft, takes place during National Cyber Security Awareness Month. No other game is as heavily targeted by thieves as WoW, so we thought this would be as good a time as any to run down [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Botnet activity, Destructive behavior, Downloaders, Keyloggers, phishing, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (1)

WoW Patch Brings Out the Malware Trolls

October 20, 2010 – 10:42 am

By Andrew Brandt Last week, Activision/Blizzard released a long-anticipated patch for its immensely popular game, World of Warcraft. While I don’t play this game, a number of our Threat Researchers do, and they’ve been on the lookout for shenanigans. Curtis Fechner found a doozy. The update comprises a major overhaul of many core systems within [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in phishing, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Trojans | Comments (2)

Five Reasons You Should Always “Stop. Think. Connect.”

October 4, 2010 – 9:27 am

By Andrew Brandt Today’s the official kickoff for National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and the organizations supporting the event, including the National Cyber Security Alliance, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, and dozens of corporate citizens including Webroot, want you to protect your computer and your personal information. So they’ve come up with a three word campaign [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in adware, Blackhat SEO, Botnet activity, Destructive behavior, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Keyloggers, malware, Online shopping threats, Passwords, phishing, Rogue Security Products, Search engines, social engineering, social networks, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Trojans, Website owners | Comments (19)

Starcraft 2 Launch Day Piracy Infects Eager Gamers

July 29, 2010 – 2:46 pm

By Andrew Brandt While some members of our Threat Research group are attending talks at the Black Hat Briefings, the rest of the team is back at our offices, hard at work watching for novel threats.  That’s good news for gamers, and bad news for malware distributors who might try to take advantage of a [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Downloaders, malware, PC gaming, phishing, social engineering, Threat Research | Comments (8)

WoW Expansion Beta Likely to Spawn Phishers, Scams

June 30, 2010 – 4:04 pm

By Andrew Brandt Blizzard’s announcement today that they will begin a closed beta-test for the latest expansion pack is likely to generate a lot of excitement among that particularly low breed of online criminals who steal the fruits of other people’s entertainment when they commandeer passwords for other players. While it’s hard to believe that [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Firefox, Passwords, PC gaming, phishing, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (7)

Chinese Phishers Get On the Fake Codec Bandwagon

June 28, 2010 – 3:19 pm

By Andrew Brandt Malware distributors in China have started pushing the same kinds of fake codec scams on unsuspecting Chinese Web surfers that criminals elsewhere in the world have mastered. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I feel sorry for the Chinese victims, most of whom are probably blissfully [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Stupid malware tricks, social engineering, Downloaders | Comments (1)

Game Phishing Trojan Uses DirectX to Launch Itself

May 20, 2010 – 1:42 pm

By Andrew Brandt PC gamers have a new threat to contend with, one that has your personal information in its crosshairs and you can’t dispatch with a sniper rifle or BFG9000: A Trojan designed to steal game passwords that uses Microsoft’s own graphics engine, DirectX, against you. The Trojan, which appears to have originated in [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Keyloggers, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (1)

Play it Safe on Safer Internet Day

February 8, 2010 – 12:32 pm

By Andrew Brandt February 9 marks Safer Internet Day, and around the world, people are trying to help their fellow netizens navigate an obstacle course of threats to their security and privacy. InSafe, the organization funded by the EU that sponsors the annual youth-targeted event, has themed the day around the concept “Think B4 U [...]

By mguthrie09 | Also posted in Firefox, Phishing Trojans, social engineering, social networks, Stupid malware tricks | Comments (4)
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