It’s amazing what a little creative editing can do, and someone, somewhere, decided to re-engineer a PR piece from Kaspersky Labs to make it seem like that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are being targeted with 34,000 hacking attacks per day.
That “news” has now whizzed across the internet and landed upon the TSA Newsdesk, but as the link we were sent couldn’t even get a picture of the PS4 correct I did a little more research and found the original press release.
ABINGDON, England, December 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ —
Just days after the launch of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, Kaspersky Lab experts have discovered that PC gamers across Europe were hit by a massive number of attacks in 2013. Currently Kaspersky Lab knows 4.6 million pieces of gaming focused malware, with the total number of attacks facing gamers hitting 11.7 million globally. On average, users were hit by 34,000 attacks related to gaming malware daily. With Christmas coming up and hundreds of thousands expected to receive games as presents, Kaspersky Lab experts are recommending users take the right precautions.
As you can see Kaspersky have rather unwisely tried to piggy back news of PC troubles on the launch of next-gen console, there is not mention of the next-gen consoles being hacked. Kaspersky use the same tactics a little later on in the same press release:
“We’ve just seen two of the biggest console launches ever, with the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. That means there will be more gamers for criminals to target, especially as the Sony and Microsoft machines increasingly use the Internet for a fuller gaming experience. And don’t forget the PC, still the most popular gaming platform and cyber crooks’ favourite target,” says David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
Whilst it is true that you could get malware on your PC which could, in theory, steal your password for your PSN account if you used the web store, there are no viruses on the PSN ox Xbox Live networks themselves.
It is also very unlikely that someone is trying to hack just your console, apart from the NSA and GCHQ of course.
Obviously we advise that you should keep your PC virus checker up to date, there are plenty of free versions on the web which don’t come packaged with scaremongering, next-gen console press releases.
Source: PR Newswire
Amphlett
A little FUD here and there helps sales. Can’t blame ’em for trying.
Spence1115
“Just days after the launch of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, Kaspersky Lab experts have discovered that PC gamers across Europe were hit by a massive number of attacks in 2013.”
So two unrelated events. What a terrible press release.
Just minutes after I ate some cheesecake, an island in the south Indian ocean was stuck by a massive earthquake. That’s only a mildly more tedious link…
TSBonyman
Thought this ‘news’ was a bit odd when i read it earlier, nice to see a common-sense report!
gernboes
These Kaspersky lab experts must be pretty bad at their job, if they just now “discovered” that pc gamers are attacked by hackers… I could have told them a lttle bit earlier…
lambchop
Phew, glad I missed this story!