Viruses/Worms News

Microsoft: Gaming criminals top threat

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Microsoft has identified two threat families on the company's detection and removal list this month and stated they were online game password stealers (PWS).

The two families are the Taterf worm and Frethog, both of which are used to steal gaming credentials from users by either keylogging or by injecting itself into game clients and reading memory, SCMagazineus.com reports.

According to a report from Microsoft, approximately 980,000 machines were infected with the Taterf worm, which is the top threat of the month. Frethog was found in 316,971 computers.

One security official told the news provider the motivation behind such attacks was financial and described as an effort by the cybercriminal to garner the currency used in the game. The official compared the identity theft to stealing banking information.

The affected computers were running Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

The presence of these worms is a stark change from last year when most of the attacks were detected in China and in games such as Legends of Mir and Lineage. This time, they are predominantly occurring in the U.S.