Monday, May 31, 2010

Symantec: 44 million accounts online games pirated

The software vendor Symantec recently announced he had discovered the pot with roses on piracy accounts for online games: Researchers at the company would have laid hands on a server with 17GB of stolen information, which represent 44 million user accounts.

It would mainly Chinese gamblers accounts, recovered thanks to a Trojan horse, the image of Infostealer.Gampass . Another malware, Trojan.Loginck , also installed on the computers of users, would be responsible then verify the validity of the information stolen.

18 games would be affected, not only MMORPG subscription, since Free to Play is also cut by the lion as well, PlayNC, a service published by NCsoft, count two million accounts corrupt and Entertainment Wayi very popular Asia, would accumulate 16 million. World of Warcraft and Aion are victims to a lesser extent, with respectively 210,000 and 60,000 hacked accounts.

Symantec reveals that these accounts would be intended to be resold on online sites such as Player Auctions Gameware or at prices vary according to their value. The editor is careful about assessing such a database, but estimates, for example, a Wow account can be offered for sale between 35 and 28 thousand dollars depending on the value of its contents. The "tariff" that fall between 6 and 2855 dollars for an account with PlayNC, but remain still very high for free games.

The publisher recommends, as it should be, the greatest caution to players, advising them to ensure that their antivirus is able to identify Trojan.Loginck. In case of doubt, it is advisable to change the password of the accounts of games ...

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