Password Stealers targeting games are growing more than ever

Months after months, we receive new password stealers and keyloggers. They enlarge our collections. When they arrive in our hands, some are already generically detected while others must be added into our DAT files. All are itemized and contribute to the global increase of malware which you can observe on our DAT Readme Web page.

In a recent Identity Theft white paper, I made a first count and established the number increased by 250% between January 2004 and May 2006. In order to update that figure, I established some new and more accurate lists.

By and large, when June ended, malware classified in that category came close to 35,000. If the trend goes on, we will reach 45,000 items at the dawn of the next year.

With the load of malware we see, many of them are classified as “such or such” generic PWS families. However, when it is possible or needed we categorize them more precisely. In December 2006, I explained that collecting data to gain access to Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) and others social networking communities were highly valued activities. Less known than banking fraud, this activity can be very profitable.
The next charts summarize the 5 main families for which we added new items in 2007.

At McAfee Avert Labs the main PWS families are the following :

Crooks not only win money by collecting, selling or using usernames and passwords from online banking and e-commerce. There is more and more talk of a virtual economy and electronic cash. Some, like Second Life or Entropia Universe, boast about having brought about success stories or rich virtual account holders who have seen their fortune grow into a million actual dollars. Blizzard recently banned more than 5,000 World of Warcraft accounts that were suspected of participating in gold farming activities. eBay made decision to stop posting virtual object property auctions apart from Second Life.

When the money circulates, it attracts greed. These latest figures confirm this trend. The bridge between virtual economy and real economy is generating a new form of crime and a new form of illegal profit.