Kaspersky reveals a rise in cyberattacks targeting gamers

A comprehensive study conducted by Kaspersky reveals an escalating wave of cyberattacks targeting the global video gaming community, which now encompasses roughly half of the world's population. From July 2022 to July 2023, a growing security decline among gamers has been observed.

Internet criminals are targeting this community to obtain personal data from its members. They have launched attacks that exploit web vulnerabilities, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, cryptocurrency mining attacks, as well as sophisticated Trojan horse malware and phishing campaigns.

During this period, Kaspersky recorded around 4,076,530 attempts to download illicit files disguised as well-known games, game modifications, cheat files, and other gaming-related software. These incidents affected approximately 192,456 users worldwide.

Although these files are classified as unwanted software, they are often categorized as "not-a-virus: Downloader" by antivirus programs. This classification means they are download tools for viruses but not viruses themselves, accounting for 89.7% of the cases.

In addition, adware posed a threat to 5.3% of users, and Trojan horse software was a concern for 2.4% of desktop gamers.

Minecraft emerged as the primary target for cybercriminals, representing 70.3% of all alerts and impacting 130,619 players worldwide.

Roblox was the second most heavily targeted game, triggering 20.4% of the total alerts and affecting 30,367 users.

Other games that faced cyber threats included Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at 4.8%, PUBG at 2.9%, Hogwarts Legacy at 0.6%, DOTA 2 at 0.5%, and League of Legends at 0.3%.