New Danger In Online Gaming

Hackers are circling gaming sites, ready to infect.

Online gaming is huge. It�s also dangerous. According to a June 2010 Nielsen NetView survey on Internet usage, online gaming has overtaken e-mail in terms of the total percentage of time Americans spend online (10.2 percent versus 8.3 percent). Only social networking scores higher, with a whopping 22.7 percent. Online gaming now consumes a staggering 407 million hours of U.S. citizens� time per year, according to Nielsen.

Nielsen�s not the only one that has noticed this trend; cybercriminals have taken note and are taking advantage of it, too, infecting games sites�from legitimate forums and tutorial sites to shadier download sites�to attack the unwary.

�As the gaming industry continues to grow, hackers will inevitably develop more ways to target this massive group,� said Ondrej Vlcek, chief technical officer of Czech security company Avast, makers of avast! Internet Security 5.0 and avast! Free Antivirus. Avast continually gathers data about infected sites, publishing a monthly Most Wanted List to highlight the worst sites in a given portion of the Web. For October, Avast sliced its data to reveal the riskiest gaming sites on the Web, to warn customers and raise awareness of the threat. Avast�s worst offenders, as of October 6:

� Gamesfactoryinteractive.com
� Games-digest.com
� Mariogamesplay.com
� Anywhere-games.com
� Galacticflashgames.com
� Towerofdefense.com

To safely game online, Avast recommends a few simple precautions:

� Keep all your apps, and especially your antivirus, updated.

� Don�t turn off your antivirus while you�re playing games.

� Instead, use your antivirus� gaming function if you want to game uninterrupted.

� Beware of downloading games via warez sites, which are a known avenue for spreading malware.

Source of Information :  PC Magazine November 2010