Any serious gamer has run into that all but impossible game to defeat. Either he can’t make it past a certain level or can’t figure out the right moves to make to defeat the enemy. This means all serious gamers have been tempted to cheat once. Online games have become increasingly popular, to the tune of 330 million players worldwide. While it is a lucrative market for legitimate business owners to reach, it is even more so for illegitimate ones. Those who would use a gamers love for gaming, and the temptation to cheat those games to their advantage.
There are downloadable cheats, patches and “keygens” that are supposed to help the gamer to achieve his goal of defeating the game. The true gamer sees these cheats and downloads them. They may or may not actually do what the ad says they will, but according to AVG Viruslab Research Group Technologies, more than 90% of these are infected with malicious malware. The malware then decrypts the gamer’s website passwords and sends them to the attacker through the victim’s email account. While we normally think of passwords to bank accounts and social media as the target of these hackers, in this case, it’s the gamer’s account they want.
An advanced gamer’s account can actually be sold online for cash. In-game purchases, (yes those items you purchased in the game that aren’t real) like power-ups, weapons and equipment can be sold or traded before you get your account back. There is actually a market of 330 million players who would purchase your account from the hacker. You can avoid this by using a little common sense, and by not succumbing to the temptation to cheat. Don’t download cheats! When you download, only do so from the game provider’s official Web site.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Leave your comment