Global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, Kaspersky revealed that cybercriminals launched more than 7 million attacks on children and exploited popular game titles last year. These include phishing pages mimicking global titles such as Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Apex Legends.
In its latest report titled “The dark side of kids’ virtual gaming worlds”, Kaspersky found that risks for young players in online gaming and focused attacks on this age group increased by 57 per cent compared to 2021. Specifically, the company’s security solutions detected more than 7 million attacks in 2022 compared to the 4.5 million attacks recorded a year prior.
In 2022, 232,735 gamers encountered almost 40,000 files, including malware and potentially unwanted applications, that were disguised as the most popular children’s games. Furthermore, since children of this age often do not have their own computers and play from their parents’ devices, the threats spread by cybercriminals are most likely aimed at obtaining the credit card data and credentials of their parents.
During the same period, nearly 40,000 users tried to download a malicious file, mimicking Roblox, a popular kids’ game platform. This resulted in a 14 per cent increase in the number of victims, compared to 33,000 gamers attacked in 2021.
Since half of Roblox’s 60 million users are under the age of 13, the majority of victims of these cybercriminals’ attacks are potentially children who lack knowledge of cybersecurity. According to Kaspersky statistics, phishing pages used by cybercriminals to target young players primarily mimicked Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Apex Legends games. In total, over 878,000 phishing pages were created for these four games in 2022.
The report also found that the most popular titles exploited by cybercriminals in 2021 and 2022 are Minecraft and Roblox. Moreover, the top children’s games ranked by the number of attacked users included games designed for 3 to 8-year-old children such as Poppy Playtime and Toca Life World.
Kaspersky experts observed a 41 per cent rise in the number of affected users downloading malicious files disguised as Brawl Stars, reaching about 10 thousand gamers attacked in 2022. Accordingly, the company recommends users do the following in order to keep children safe online:
- Don’t neglect to show interest in your kids’ online activity. Ask them if you can watch their favourite series or listen to music tracks together. As an option, you can learn together some secure practices to stay safe online.
- A good option could be parental control apps. But it’s important to discuss this topic with your child to explain how these apps work and why they’re needed to stay safe online
- Explain that sensitive information should only be shared via messengers and only with people they know in real life. You can be a role model and show them good examples of good behaviour.
- Spend more time communicating with your kids about online safety measures. Try paying attention to your own habits. Do you use your smartphone while eating or talking? Are your kids mimicking any of your habits or behaviour patterns? Do they react in a different way when you put your phone away?
- Make talks about cybersecurity more enjoyable and interesting by discussing them with your child through games and other entertaining formats
For more information on the study and to read the full report, visit Kaspersky’s official blog post here. As always, make sure to stay tuned to TechNave for more trending tech news such as this.
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