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Cyber-criminals Targeting Online Gaming Websites
adeelarshad82 writes "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. Only social networking scores higher. On average, online gaming now consumes a staggering 407 million hours of U.S. citizens' time per year. Unfortunately, Nielsen's not the only one that noticed this trend; cybercriminals have taken note as well and are taking advantage of this by infecting games sites—from legitimate forums and tutorial sites to shadier download sites—to attack the unwary. Fortunately though, Avast has published a list of worst gaming sites."
...keep your Anti-Virus software updated and running at all times.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Those must be the most infested, never before known gaming websites in internet history. I think they must of paid somebody to put those sites in the article.
C:\WINDOWS\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS
0.0.0.0 Gamesfactoryinteractive.com
0.0.0.0 Games-digest.com
0.0.0.0 Mariogamesplay.com
0.0.0.0 Anywhere-games.com
0.0.0.0 Galacticflashgames.com
0.0.0.0 Towerofdefense.com
Start->Run->"notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts"
Go to new blank line and copy/paste:
127.0.0.1 gamesfactoryinteractive.com
127.0.0.1 games-digest.com
127.0.0.1 mariogamesplay.com
127.0.0.1 anywhere-games.com
127.0.0.1 galacticflashgames.com
127.0.0.1 towerofdefence.com
(Save the file)
Profit.
On average, online gaming now consumes a staggering 407 million hours of U.S. citizens' time per year.
A whole hour and 18 minutes per person per year? That's nearly 0.0015% of the time! I don't see how the US ever gets anything done at that rate.
Worst offenders, as of October 6, 2010:
Gamesfactoryinteractive.com
Games-digest.com
Mariogamesplay.com
Anywhere-games.com
Galacticflashgames.com
Towerofdefense.com
ea.com
Honestly I'm beginning to think I'm better off with a hardened router with no upnp enabled and rules for traffic on certain ports. a good firewall is a convenient way to track what programs are going in/out but the AV sucks up too many cpu cycles.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Now, by gambling, do they mean e-trade and td-datek-ameritrade or whatever its called now?
Or checking out zillow zestimates and buying real estate, because real estate only goes up?
I believe second life got rid of all its casinos. Is second life still online?
Then theres the gamble of risking your reputation on online dating sites...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS
0.0.0.0 Gamesfactoryinteractive.com
0.0.0.0 Games-digest.com
0.0.0.0 Mariogamesplay.com
0.0.0.0 Anywhere-games.com
0.0.0.0 Galacticflashgames.com
0.0.0.0 Towerofdefense.com
FTFY.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
You don't have to reboot windows for host file changes to take affect, at least I have never needed to on Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7....
You might have to close your web browser, in rare cases an ipconfig /flushdns but reboot isn't needed.
Looking at the list of "evil sites":
I ran them all through SiteTruth, which, unsurprisingly, can't find a legit business behind any of them and thus down-rates them as junk sites.
AV programs tend to be easily bypassed. Instead, use what the parent suggested, but add AdBlock, IP blackholing, sandboxie, BetterPrivacy, and other items. These utilities will do a better job for keeping the Web browser from being a vector of infection than any AV software out there. If you need AV for Windows, grab MSE and call it done. If really paranoid, run your browsing in a VM that rolls back all changes.
If you need some decently secure web browsing, boot a Knoppix CD. By default it doesn't even mount your hard drives. And all changes to the ram side of the unionfs filesystem expire with a reboot.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Criminals try to steal money? Hardly any news. Please come back when Cyber-criminals DON'T try to abuse a specific group of sites.
"Dog bites man" is not news. "Man bites dog" is.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you have kids with PCs I would suggest Comodo Time Machine. Sure you can do as another poster suggest and use the HOSTS file to block just these sites, but then you are in an arms race with the malware guys you are bound to lose. With time Machine you can send the OS "back in time" to before they did something stupid, and in my experience it only uses around 20Mb of RAM, trivial with today's machines.
As for the other posters complaining about high AV CPU usage? I've found Comodo Internet Security uses on average less than 45Mb of RAM and less than 1% CPU when running real time monitoring, and around 8% when it updates itself. It also has built in sandboxing on ALL executables by default, and you can set any executable to only run in or out of the sandbox if you'd like. The AV, Time Machine, and Internet Security (which combines their excellent firewall with Comodo AV) is 100% free, no nagware, no email required. You can even choose to use their secure DNS if you'd like which black holes known infected sites until they clean up their act.
I don't work for the company or have any affiliation, just a humble PC repair guy that got tired of seeing his customers get burnt by bugs or bad AV. with Comodo I haven't seen a single bug on installed machines, and this is with customers that can pick up more bugs than a Bangkok Whore, so you KNOW it has got to be good! But with kids besides making them low rights users by default a combo of Comodo AV and Time Machine will not only keep the bugs out, but if they manage to bork something beyond booting you can just hit F11 and restore it from the preboot environment. My GF lives nearly 2 hours away and having Time Machine was a life saver when she forgot to log off and her niece completely borked XP! try them, I bet you'll like them, and for free, what's to lose? One warning though: DO NOT use Time Machine in a dual boot with windows 7! It won't harm anything, it just won't run because the latest windows changes drive letters so wherever you install it becomes the C: drive when it is running, which Time Machine couldn't track. But I'm not only running all of the above on multiple machines, I have customers, friends, and family all on it and they work like a charm.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.