New consoles have brought a surge in hacking attempts

Europe’s getting the worst of it

The gaming world isn’t the only group of people that’s excited by the recent launch of new consoles. It turns out that the hacker community’s just as thrilled. Unsurprisingly, it seems that its intententions are far more nefarious.

According to Kaspersky Lab, a cyber security firm, there’s been a drastic increase in hacking attempts to correspond with the releases of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Thus far, the firm knows of 4.6 million attempts, an average of 34,000 occurring daily. Spain, Poland, and Italy have received the most attacks to date.

Interestingly, the hackers aren’t necessarily after credit card and banking information. Rather, their intentions are generally aimed at extracting usernames and passwords. “We’ve just seen two of the biggest console launches ever,” said a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “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 experience.”

Hackers like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One too [Consumer Affairs]