Kaspersky Finds More Than 400 Thousand Online Threats To Mobile Gamers

JAKARTA - Not only targeting PC games, Kaspersky reports also found that cybercriminals are also targeting mobile game players to put malicious programs into user devices.

Between July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, Kaspersky has successfully documented 436,786 attempts to infect mobile devices, which affected 84,539 users.

Various game titles were used as bait to target mobile gamers. Minecraft fans are once again the main target, because 90.37 percent of attacks focused on 80,128 gamers were victims. Kaspersky also found the same thing on PC with 70.29 percent.

Users in Indonesia in particular face exploitation through Minecraft, which results in Trojan attacks.AndroidOS.Pootel.a, which secretly registers mobile subscriptions.

Furthermore, PUBG: Battlegrounds Battle Royale, the second most exploited mobile game among cybercriminals, accounts for 5.09 percent of all warnings, with most incidents coming from users of the Russian Federation.

Then followed by Roblox, with 3.33 percent which makes him ranked third in terms of detection but second in the number of affected users.

Kaspersky also discovered the emergence of SpyNote, a spy Trojan distributed among Roblox users on the mobile Android platform under the guise of mod. This Trojan shows various spy capabilities, including keylogging, screen recording, video streaming from mobile cameras, and the ability to disguise themselves as Google and Facebook apps to trick users into leaking their passwords.

"In the dynamic game industry, a lot of personal and financial data is contained in it, and cybercriminals take advantage of this exciting opportunity," said Vasily Kolesnikov, cybersecurity expert at Kaspersky.

According to him, relentless personal data searches have caused a spike in ransomware attacks, even having an impact on professional gamers who depend on the game without interruption.

This underscores the important need to raise cybersecurity awareness in the gaming community, concluded Kolesnikov.