Children Used To Steal Parents' Data

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Children Used To Steal Parents' Data

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 23, 2012 @05:31PM from the virtual-fagin dept.

Barence writes "PC Pro's Davey Winder has revealed how pre-school children are being targeted by data thieves. Security vendors have uncovered a bunch of Flash-based games, colorful and attractive to young kids, which came complete with a remote access trojan. The trojan is usually installed behind a button to download more free games, but BitDefender even found one painting application where the very act of swiping the paintbrush over an online pet to change the color of the virtual animal was enough to trigger redirection to an infected site."

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And parents wonder by houstonbofh · 2012-02-23 17:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

And parents wonder why they can't let the kids use the work laptop. It's because we're Ogres! Ogres, Damnit!
1. Re:And parents wonder by Gerzel · 2012-02-23 18:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Depends on when the keylogger starts vs the login.
  If the two accounts are properly separated then the children's account should never have the access to install anything that could be run before the user login. Of course with Windows all bets are off.
2. Re:And parents wonder by Endovior · 2012-02-23 20:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Virtual Machines. They're a beautiful thing. Trojans, viruses, keyloggers... who cares? Just revert your system back to the last snapshot, and it's like it never happened... and even the worst of what does happen, won't ever affect your important materials.
Pre-School? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-23 17:48 · Score: 0, Insightful

Okay, so kindergarden is about five years old, right? So that means three and four year olds in "pre-school" (whatever that exactly is). Why, exactly, is a three or four year old using a computer?
Re:True that by Dwedit · 2012-02-23 17:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, with iPads, instead you have to worry about games where you pay for in-game goods with real money tied to the iTunes account.
Flash-based games by PatPending · 2012-02-23 18:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

Emphasis added:

BitDefender Online Threats Lab, one of the security vendors doing research in this area of cybercrime, uncovered a whole bunch of Flash-based games, colourful and attractive to young kids, which came complete with a trojan that has been designed to appeal to those same youngsters.

The article ends with this:

The moral of this tale? Don't use your laptop as a babysitter, and don't be one of the 24.7% of parents who, according to BitDefender's research, don't supervise their young kids' online activity.
How about not using Flash? (At least not on the kid's account!)
BTW: Did you notice how BitDefender got mentioned a total of four times in seven paragraphs and one pull-quote?

--
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Re:How about... by cloudmaster · 2012-02-23 18:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

To be fair, these apps look like legit apps for children. It works much the same way as other malware which would fool most adults. It's not like all parents are computer security specialists - despite all the idiots who love to talk about how their ability to figure out sex suddenly grants them equivalent knowledge to doctors, teachers, bankers, cops, and whatever else they think parenting is equivalent to. :)