Steam Stealer malware is suspected of hijacking 77,000 Steam gaming accounts per month. The malware has been observed in the wild almost 1,200 times and is being sold for £20, much cheaper than the average malware package. Here to comment on this news is Mark James, security specialist from ESET.
Mark James, Security Specialist at IT Security firm, ESET:
“Internet games are an ever increasing honeypot for malware and scams. With so much money being invested into the gaming industry and more people spending millions on their games of choice, keeping those login credentials safe needs to be the gamers’ number one priority.
The good thing is gaming companies are seeing the need to help protect their investors and more of them are now offering Two Factor Authentication (2FA) as a means to keep logins safe. Your username and password is the only thing keeping others from logging into your account to either steal your hard earned rewards, use the account for gold farming or sell it on to others. The problem with 2FA is it may hinder your ability to do some quick gaming, having your phone or hardware token at hand whenever you need to log in may seem like a hardship but honestly losing your account or your characters items will hit you harder. However, this is the easiest way to protect your accounts and some companies will certainly help you get all your stuff back quicker if you have it enabled.
But remember just having 2FA is not sufficient, making sure your gaming PC is running the latest operating system fully patched and up to date with all applications on their latest versions will help, a good regular updating internet security program will also help to keep you safe. The days of single points of protection are long gone, you need multi-layered protection if you want to stay safe. Think of it like the layers of an artichoke (everyone uses the onion analogy) the more layers you have the harder it is to get to the core.”
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