The gaming industry might soon be the next victim of large-scale cybercrime

The gaming industry has a long history with hackers. The first games themselves were hacks of sorts. As the industry grew, pirating games became the norm and developers gnashed their teeth in anger every time one of their games was taken from them. Today, however, you are the real target. In the heyday of video game piracy, hackers spent their time trying to crack the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software implemented by publishers to protect their games. When cracked, the game would find its way into the hands of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gamers for free. Developers and publishers of course claimed to be losing a large chunk of revenue because of the practice. Game developers started working harder and harder and investing more heavily in DRM and protecting their games. No matter how hard they’d try, hackers would still get through. This year however, came a breakthrough in the form of Denuvo. This DRM system broke the proverbial back of hackers, with one group going so far as to say that cracking PC games would be impossible in 2 years and that they’d quit the “scene.” Yes, cracking PC games is becoming harder and harder and while hackers may claim to have been doing it for the noblest of reasons (Down with DRM!) the difficulty in cracking modern games has proved too hard a task. The target’s painted on your back now Sadly, these hackers, and others, now have the energy to divert elsewhere and now they seem to be targeting gamers and data. Publishers and game platforms like Steam, Origin and Wargaming are host to well over a 100 million players and their financial information. Hacking such platforms is proving to be very lucrative, especially as they can yield a great deal of financial information. Big-name services like Steam are relatively secure, but smaller companies are not so conscientious when it comes to dealing with customer data and the details leak out. Accessing financial information is bad enough, but there’s also a very large market for in-game goodies on the black market. Games like World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2 and even mobile games like Crossy Roads offer a number of in-app purchases and goodies that can be bought  (with real or virtual currency) or earned. These virtual items have real world value and hackers can actually sell these items and make a tidy profit. As an example, hackers using tools like Steam Stealer are reportedly getting away with around 77,000 steam accounts every month. Apparently, the app can be bought for as little as $3, if you know where to look. Hackers then simply sell or trade away everything that they can from the account. Some of those items can go for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The real problem here is that there are no security guidelines or measures in place to universally protect your data. Games aren’t subjected to the same stringent security policies as banks and other financial institutions, and even social networks. This is a disaster waiting to happen. What can you do about it? The simplest solution is to ensure that you use unique passwords everywhere. Recycle passwords and you’re as good as hacked. How do you think hackers managed to get into Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram and other social accounts ? If you’re really bad at remembering passwords, switching to a password manager like LastPass is not a bad idea at all. If you have the option to use two-step authentication, use it. It’s more secure and very hard to crack. An antivirus or antimalware program is also a very good idea, just make sure you take a reliable one. The security of your account is, after all, at stake. Don’t give up your hard earned game-library so easily.