29 May 2010

Gaming News: 44 Million Stolen Gaming Accounts Found, by Greg Tingle - 28th May 2010

Security concerns are just as bigger concern in the gaming - video gaming industry, as in the igaming - online casino and online poker biz. Gambling911 and Media Man, encouraged by the massive response to Google's Pac-Man story, once again grab the gaming console to investigate...

Internet security outfit Symantec, posted on their website they have uncovered a "cache of stolen gaming accounts". Not just any old cache... its a "whale".

The untoward cache is around 17GB in size and contains the details of around 44 million gaming accounts.

A large proportion of the accounts details stolen are for popular games World of Warcraft and Aion.

The data was apparently stolen using software such as Infostealer. Gamepass and then verified with a threat known as Trojan. Lognick, which tests account details and logs all successful login and password combinations.

Of the accounts stolen around 210,000 were for World of Warcraft with online values between 35 and 28,000 USD.

Early this year Gambling911 reported that a number of British bookmakers and online casino companies were being investigated for stealing and attempted selling of players data. Media Man has been approached a number of times over the years by criminals attempting to sell "players lists" (name, email, $ value, casino name, address etc), of which Media Man did not purchase, and in fact tipped off law enforcement agencies.

Symantec, maker of Norton Antivirus, recommends that you keep your antivirus protection up to date and change you passwords regularly.

Media Man and Gambling911 also recommend you have different passwords for both your videogaming account and online casino account.

Security will be one of hundreds of topics discussed and displayed at the upcoming E3 Expo in Los Angeles on 15th June. The expo will feature the worldwide hard launch of Richard Branson's Virgin Gaming, and you can bet security will be tight.. an Aussie MP reckons "gamers are more scary than bikers"... lets see if he's right. Good hunting, happy hunting, and good gaming.

*Greg Tingle is a special contributor for Gambling911

*Media Man http://www.mediamanint.com is primarily a media, publicity and internet portal development company. Media Man International also publish Global Gaming Directory

http://www.globalgamingdirectory.com

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