WoW Players Need to be Cautious

According to security experts at Webroot, gamers of World of Warcraft (WoW) are being distributed malware with the rising value of game accounts in lines with the software's popularity.

Security researchers Grayson Milbourne and Curtis Fechner stated that majority of WoW gamers have friends who were infected by Trojan and as a result, saw their accounts being hacked, reported SCMagazine on August 21, 2009.

The researchers claimed that "Keylogger posts" on the message boards of WoW are among the most widespread methods by which malware writers distribute malicious codes to WoW gamers. Although veterans of WoW would not be much affected by such malicious tactics used of criminals, there are many who simply can't resist the attractive ploy or wish to know more on their Death Knight (character in WoW).

They also stated that the players downloading and executing flash installer would not notice any marked difference on their PCs so that they might get the hint that they have got infected. And it is the point at which Trojan is all set to steal login details of the player.

Configuration of infections is simple, but the malware are highly complex, the researchers claimed. The installer just installs a DLL file onto hard drive of the victim's PC, usually to System32 or any other Windows subdirectory, performing keystroke logging and thus, forwarding the credentials to the mastermind of the scam. It manipulates the registry as well to facilitate the loading of file with every single start-up.

In addition to this, the page appears as a page of flash video-based porn website, drawing some graphics from that porn site. However, the fact is that each link on that page directs to malware installer. It is a simple trick of social engineering, widely used by Koobface earlier to dodge Facebook users; however, it still somehow manages to lure users to run malware installer so as to see the video.

Although there are indications that the account details are phished particularly for the gaming account credentials, there is no precise way to stop these people from logging some more to other sites visited by the victim. This, if happens, will take no time to transform into a major incident of identity theft.

Related article: WoW – A Current Popular Target for Identity Thieves

» SPAMfighter News - 9/15/2009