Gaming is not often associated with cyberattacks, but it is worth remembering threat actors will always try to exploit a weakness, no matter the tech sector. And a prime target for hackers in the gaming industry is Minecraft. According to Statista, attackers are attracted to the gaming market, which amounts to an estimated $268.8 billion.
Security research firm Kaspersky also points to Minecraft as the game hackers target the most often. In some ways, that is to be expected as Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time. It is also available across platforms, open to modding, and has a major community behind it.
It just makes sense that threat actors would use Minecraft to bait users with malware attacks. Kaspersky says bait attacks on the game affected 131,005 users between July 2021 to June 2022, with 23,239 malware files sent.
Files
Following Minecraft, other games saw a high number of unwanted files distributed: FIFA (10,776), Roblox (8,903), Far Cry (8,736), Call of Duty (8,319), Need for Speed (7,569), Grand Theft Auto (7,125), Valorant (5,426), The Sims (5,005), and CS:GO (4,790).
“The research revealed an increase in attacks using malicious software that steals sensitive data from infected devices,” Kaspersky says.
“It included such verdicts as Trojan-PSW (Password Stealing Ware) which gathers victims' credentials, Trojan-Banker which steals payment data, and Trojan-GameThief which collects login information for gaming accounts. From July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022, Kaspersky security solutions detected a total of 6,491 users affected by 3,705 unique malicious files of these types.”
Tip of the day: Headsets are a vital tool for communication and can cause stressful moments when they don´t work as planned. In our tutorial we are showing you how to properly set up a headset on your Windows PC so this will be a thing of the past.
