Cyber attacks against young gamers increased in 2022: Don't be the next target

Experts found that cybercriminals carried out more than 7 million attacks against children using the name of popular games in 2022.

Cybercriminals deliberately created fake game sites to reach parents' devices, allowing children to track phishing pages and download malicious files.

The most abused children's games

Experts analyzed the threats on popular online games that children aged 3-16 are most interested in. Kaspersky security solutions observed more than 7 million attacks between January 2022 and December 2022. In 2021, cybercriminals attempted 4.5 million attacks in this area, while in 2022, these similar attack attempts increased by 57%. In 2022, 232,735 gamers encountered nearly 40,000 files, including malware disguised as popular children's games and potentially unwanted applications. Since children this age often don't have their own computers and play games with their parents' devices, threats spread by cybercriminals are likely aimed at hijacking parents' credit card data and credentials.

In the same period, approximately 40 thousand users tried to download malicious files by imitating Roblox, a popular children's game platform. This resulted in a 14% increase in the number of victims compared to the 33,000 players hacked in 2021. Half of Roblox's 60 million users are under the age of 13, revealing that the majority of victims of cybercriminals are children who are potentially uninformed about cybersecurity.