FIFA 23, in the crosshairs of cybercriminals who encourage the purchase of FUT coins on fake pages

Oct. 15 (Portaltic/EP) –

The latest iteration of FIFA presented by EA Sports, FIFA 23has become one of the most interesting video games for cyber criminals, who have spread cyber scams by buying FUT coins on fake pages.

Currently, the video game market moves large amounts of money. According to Data of Statistical, the size of the world market reaches close to 200,000 million dollars per year (almost 205,000 million euros).

Due to the large amount of money generated by this online gaming business, cybercriminals have perpetrated crimes against multinationals in this sector. For it, they have used confidential information of the brandsin order to filter previews of products that have not yet been released.

One of the last known assaults was on the Rockstar Games company, when the attackers leaked more than 90 videos of a development version of the game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA6). Years before, he had already suffered another similar attack with the game Red Dead Redemption 2.

On the other hand, due to virtual currency movements generated by video games, these cybercriminal groups have also taken advantage of the occasion to monetize transactions in recently released titles.

EA Sports with FIFA 23, which in subsequent iterations will acquire the EA Sport FC nomenclature, is a good example of this. In September, the month this product was launched, the company received an alert that they could have been victims of a cyber attack and the theft of information about your new bet.

In this sense, the Global Consumer Operations Manager of Panda SecurityHervé Lambert, recognizes that cybercriminals “focus their efforts on attacking from individuals to large companies” and that “they have highly developed mechanisms to know how to infiltrate the networks of large corporations without any effort.”

Precisely FIFA 23 presents a potential danger in one of its most demanded activities, the Ultimate Team mode transfer market, where purchases with FUT coins take place. “It’s easier than it seems to lose money when buying FUT coins if you don’t properly verify the legitimacy of the page you’re buying from,” says Lambert.

Since cyber scammers always find a way to take advantage of these money movements, it is recommended that players carry out these monetary transactions on verified pages of the developer.

It’s also a good idea to ignore offers of coins at very low prices, especially if they are received through social networks or third-party sites that require payment in advance. On the other hand, it is important to be suspicious of those pages that, in addition to money, request information and personal data from EA accounts.

Panda Security also highlights the phishing scams to hack the accounts of other players, since cybercriminals also have posed as EA Sports itself to contact users via ’email’.

Specifically, they offer FIFA Ultimate Team promotions and encourage potential victims to click on a fraudulent link that embeds the body of the message and redirects to a fake web page.

It looks very similar to the original, so some players end up entering their account credentials, giving cybercriminals a free pass to steal them, access your profile settings, and learn your bank details, among other things. .

THE DANGERS OF ‘FREEMIUM’ CONTENT

This method is also given in other ‘freemium’ content titles –where the game is free but users pay to unlock levels or not view advertising– and where they have saved their bank cards to make purchases within the game.

On the other hand, from Panda Security they anticipate that it is also common for cyber-fraudsters to send private messages through the console’s own online messaging system. EA Sports never contact players through this channel, information that not everyone knows, so they end up revealing confidential data to hackers, ignoring that it is they and not the company that collects it.

To conclude, it is worth taking into account the risks that players assume when they use third-party applications and programs, with which advantages are promised but which can also download malicious software.

One of the best known cases is that of Hearthstone, a Blizzard card game in which some players cheat after downloading programs like HearthStone Hack Tool v2.1 or Heartbuddy. thanks to these you can know which are the cards of the opponents but, in turn, hackers can access the personal files of the webcam of the device on which they have been installed.