Australian security experts: Gamers are high profile targets

Microsoft recently admitted to being a victim of hacking through social engineering. Social engineering is defined as “a collection of techniques used to manipulate people into performing actions or divulging confidential information” (Wikipedia). The company’s phone support staff released the account details of some Xbox Live users to some callers. As a result, some users were charged with purchases they did not make.

Security experts from Australia believe that this is not an isolated case. Gamers are being warned that they are one of the new high profile targets this year. MacLeonard Starkey, a security analyst for Australia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (Auscert), said, “I haven’t seen [sic] any malicious code that is specifically designed to run on a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox but I would expect (it) is not very far away at all.”

He further elaborated on this, citing the attacks on MMORPG gamers. “We’re seeing an awful lot of malicious code that will specifically target online games for the purposes of capturing user names and passwords.” He stressed the financial ramifications of the incidents saying that these “thieves” can log in and steal the items collected by the players over a course of time. “There’s actually some pretty good money in that,” he added.
 
However, not everyone sees the threat as inherently malicious. The director of product management at security software maker CA 1, Stefana Muller, believes that the attacks on gaming payment systems and less damaging “proof-of-concept” hacks will be done to show off a hackers proficiency than for monetary gain.

She gave her take on the matter. “I think it’s going to be an ‘I did it’ kind of target, ‘I got to exploit this gaming console‘. It’s obvious that once a new thing comes out, if it’s cool, it will be exploited.”

Microsoft recently admitted to being a victim of hacking through social engineering. Social engineering is defined as “a collection of techniques used to manipulate people into performing actions or divulging confidential information” (Wikipedia). The company’s phone support staff released the account details of some Xbox Live users to some callers. As a result, some users were charged with purchases they did not make.

Security experts from Australia believe that this is not an isolated case. Gamers are being warned that they are one of the new high profile targets this year. MacLeonard Starkey, a security analyst for Australia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (Auscert), said, “I haven’t seen [sic] any malicious code that is specifically designed to run on a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox but I would expect (it) is not very far away at all.”

He further elaborated on this, citing the attacks on MMORPG gamers. “We’re seeing an awful lot of malicious code that will specifically target online games for the purposes of capturing user names and passwords.” He stressed the financial ramifications of the incidents saying that these “thieves” can log in and steal the items collected by the players over a course of time. “There’s actually some pretty good money in that,” he added.
 
However, not everyone sees the threat as inherently malicious. The director of product management at security software maker CA 1, Stefana Muller, believes that the attacks on gaming payment systems and less damaging “proof-of-concept” hacks will be done to show off a hackers proficiency than for monetary gain.

She gave her take on the matter. “I think it’s going to be an ‘I did it’ kind of target, ‘I got to exploit this gaming console‘. It’s obvious that once a new thing comes out, if it’s cool, it will be exploited.”