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Children Used To Steal Parents' Data

Posted by samzenpus on 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."

11 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. And parents wonder by houstonbofh · · 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 · · 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 · · 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.

    3. Re:And parents wonder by shadowmas · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Generally yes. But remember that anything running on the VM is behind your routers firewall and might be in a more permissive network. So it can be used as a platform to execute a exploit to gain access to other machines on the network, the host machine or maybe even compromise the router/firewall (defualt passwords anyone?).

      I use VMs when I test applications if I'm not sure about its origin, but you should always be carefull about how it's network access and such.

  2. What do you mean used to? by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 4, Funny

    They still do!

    uh. um.

    nvrmnd

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    This space available.
  3. True that by parallel_prankster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My nephews and niece did this when they used to visit my parents place. Within days of their visit my dad, who is not much of a computer person, will call me asking why windows has stopped working. I got a lot of software installed on their computer to monitor these things, yet somehow the kids always managed to install some crap. One good thing that happened was when they turned their attention to Ipads. It has apps on it that are kid friendly but haven't seen Viruses Trojans etc in Ipad apps yet.

    1. Re:True that by Dwedit · · 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.

    2. Re:True that by mosschops · · Score: 5, Informative

      Settings -> General -> Restrictions -> Require Password -> Immediately

      No more 15 minute password caching :)

  4. Re:Pre-School? by parallel_prankster · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is cold here in the winter time so kids cannot go out much. There are only that many other things around the house that you can get them engaged in. Besides, the computer has some cool paint software that kids can play with. There is also one app on the Ipad (among the many) that teaches how to play piano. As long as you don't let them spend too much time on the computer and you can properly monitor their usage, it is fine for kids to be on the computer to get familiar with it.

  5. Wow, really? by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 4, Funny

    "But worse still, BitDefender even found one painting application where the very act of swiping the paintbrush over an online pet to change the colour of the virtual animal was enough to trigger redirection to an infected site"

    No way! You mean a scripting language reacted to user input such as onMouseOver and executed a forbidden instruction such as redirecting the site, by exploiting a vulnerability in document.location.href? This is clearly ADVERTISEMENT for BitDefender who is mentioned throughout the article as a "researcher" while showing no actual "research".

    They are not actually talking about the attack vector, because they haven't found anything. They are essentially saying that a href is a vulnerability because it might lead to an "infected" (whatever that means) site.

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    WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
  6. Re:Pre-School? by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Where do you live, Antarctica?

    In Antarctica, it would be summer now.