Consumers should start preparing for new types of fraud and theft targeting games consoles, according to leading network security company Trend Micro Middle East and Africa.

Internet-enabled gaming is becoming a major force in home entertainment, which makes it a target for criminal activity. In turn, this obliges experts within the IT industry to offer help and advice.

“Based on all the precedents, the so-called ‘creative’ minds of the malware industry will be quick to capitalise on public enjoyment of these fantastic and powerful products,” said managing director of Trend Micro Middle East and Africa Justin Doo.

Just as the challenges facing the IT industry have mutated in recent years, from computer viruses to web-borne stealth attacks, in future it will probably extend to games consoles.

This prediction reflects the pace of development within the illegal malware industry – which now stages its own graduate recruitment events in some parts of the world – rather than any intrinsic flaws in the consoles themselves.

Part of the appeal of the new generation of gaming platforms is their capacity to let players interact online. Based on the speed with which other forms of online activity have been attacked, Doo estimates it is only a matter of time before hackers are able to exploit vulnerabilities in games systems via the internet, in order to access the information and stored on them and misuse their processing power.

“Criminals could take control of the storage and processing power of a games console and use it for illicit purposes, such as launching spam and distributing denial of service (DNS) attacks,” said Doo. “Stranger still, we are already seeing crimes where virtual properties – which solely exist as data – are being stolen and sold on for hard cash.”

Trend Micro is developing its response to these new problems, such as Web Security for PS3, the first globally supported Web security service for a home game system, which uses Trend Micro’s own Web reputation and URL filtering technology.

By using this service, a wide range of PS3 users can feel safe to browse the Internet. – TradeArabia News Service