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.

Play it Safe on Safer Internet Day

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By Andrew Brandt

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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 post.” As grammatically sloppy as that sounds, it’s actually good advice.

Readers of this blog shouldn’t be surprised that myriad dangers threaten the safety of all Internet users: Keylogging software disguised as “updates” are everywhere; Fake security alerts pop up when you least expect them; Phishing Web pages are more cleverly designed than ever to steal your passwords; Spam is choking email; Worms stalk social networks; Even your mobile phone is at risk of malicious software designed to steal valuable information from you. The big question on everyone’s mind is: What do you do to protect yourself?

The answer’s simple, really. You have to think before you act, and make sure you understand the consequences of whatever you do, write, post, or click online. Once you develop your Internet spidey senses, you’ll be able to spot something that’s out of place, or weird, or just dodgy before it catches you out.

Despite the increasingly clever tricks criminals employ, they still have to lie and cheat in order to steal. What follows are a few easy ways you can catch them out in their lie before it’s too late. We’ve also put together a short video that shows just how easy it is, once you’re in the right frame of mind.

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Phishers Break WoW’s Magic Spell Over Gamers

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By Curtis Fechner and Andrew Brandt

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While we’ve touched on the subject of World of Warcraft phishers (and the Trojans they attempt to spread) a handful of times in the past several months, it’s worth mentioning the ongoing problems phishing posts cause both players and Blizzard, the game’s operator.

To recap, the official message board for World of Warcraft is under constant attack by phishers, who use stolen credentials to post message board articles containing malicious links under the names of the innocent players whose passwords have been stolen. The links, which can be tied to virtually any kind of social engineering tease, typically point to Web sites that contain scripting code which either pushes a WoW-credential-stealing keylogger down to the victim’s computer, or aggressively “suggests” that the victim should download and install some purportedly missing component (often, a fake Flash player update) that does the same thing.

The authors who plague the forums, in-game chat and email with these posts containing malicious links are a crew of dimwits, but they aren’t so thick that they fail to recognize an opportunity when they see it. Beginning in early December, for instance, they took full advantage of the incredibly busy state of the official forums, which were filled with posts tied to the release of a highly anticipated update to the game, and rumors about “beta testing” access to the update.

The heavier-than-normal traffic kept forum moderators busier, and subsequently the phishing posts remained active on the forums much longer before administrators deleted them. A longer exposure time means it’s more likely that victims will click through the malicious links, and with the customer support staff busy solving patch-related issues, compromised accounts remain compromised — keeping paying players locked out of the game — for even longer than they normally would. The problems have become so overwhelming that even Blizzard itself has been forced to acknowledge the scale of the problem.

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The WoW Catphishers are Biting

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By Andrew Brandt

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cataclysm_youtube_link2_cropThe body’s barely cold from last week’s BlizzCon, but the script kiddies who write phishing kits have been hard at work putting their best foot forward, crafting account-stealing code that targets gullible WoW players who want an early peek at the just-announced Cataclysm expansion. These Catphish pages, linked off of YouTube video postings that offer promises of early, exclusive access to the expansion, lift graphics and design characteristics directly from the pages hosted by Blizzard, the publisher of the WoW franchise.

Unfortunately for the script kiddies making and hosting the pages, they’re making some of the most boneheaded mistakes imaginable.

Take, for example, this page. The creator of this page was so eager to get his l33t phishing site posted on his favorite message board, he forgot to take a close look at what he was including with his phish kit. It includes not only log files containing links to the live site where he’s hosting this phishing scam, but also to a site where he’s hosting another phishing scam intended to steal a promotional code given to WoW fanatics as a bonus after they paid to watch BlizzCon streamed live to their computer.

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How Phishers Target WoW Players

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By Andrew Brandt, Curtis Fechner, and Grayson Milbourne

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orc_80_flash_cropYesterday, at the opening of our BlizzCon coverage, we showed you just how commonly phishers target WoW players by posting innocuous-looking links in message board or forums frequented by players. Today, we’ve produced a really short video that shows exactly how someone infects their computer with a phishing Trojan.

As you can see in the video (even through the “censorship”), the page the victim eventually ends up on emulates the appearance of a Flash-video-based porn site. Every single link on the page links to the malware installer, which means that no matter where on the page the victim clicks, he or she is presented with a download dialog box. Check it out.

This simple social engineering trick, so commonly used of late by Koobface to fool social network users, still manages to convince people to execute the malware installer in order to view the video.

We’d all like to take a moment to give one simple piece of advice: If you follow a link and end up on a site you clearly weren’t intending to go to, stop. Don’t download any executable files—and absolutely don’t run any executable files if you happen to download them. If you have to, hit the Alt-F4 keyboard combination to kill the browser right there, but just don’t run anything else.

Misled gamers who download and run the flash “installer” won’t see any obvious difference on their computers to indicate that they are infected. At this point, the Trojan is ready to start stealing login credentials. These infections are often fairly simple in their configuration, though as with all malware there are much more complex versions that can steal the passwords for multiple games.

The installer executable simply drops a DLL file onto the victim’s hard drive, typically to the System32 or another Windows subdirectory. That file performs the keystroke logging, then sends that data to the phisher behind the scam. The installer also modifies the Registry so the DLL loads with every startup.

Keyloggers aren’t the only threats targeting online games. Others include spam phishing-type posts on the public forums for individual guilds, malicious URLs communicated through the in-game chat channels, and even exploits against security weaknesses in Web sites and message boards frequented by members of the WoW playing community.

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5 PC Gaming Threats and How To Beat Them

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By Mike Kronenberg

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WoW keyloggerE3, the annual trade show for the computer and video games industry, kicked off in Los Angeles yesterday, not long after the unofficial start of summer on Memorial Day. These events got me thinking about what many students might do with their free time over the next three months. I imagine that for legions of young PC gamers, this could mean hour after blissful hour spent honing their skills as a blacksmith and earning gold in their favorite online fantasy universe. You can bet cybercriminals are imagining the same thing, too – and banking on it. 

In PC gaming, it used to be that hackers would seek to steal log-in information to take control of someone’s character for their own personal enjoyment. But they’ve figured out in-game currency translates into real-world money, and now many people log onto World of Warcraft or Lineage to find their account balances wiped to zero. 

To help keep hackers out — and hopefully make their summer a little less lucrative – I’ve outlined the most common tactics for infection during gaming and how gamers (of all ages) can avoid them. Continue reading →