In its latest blog post (to go live at blog.malwarebytes.org soon), security research firm Malwarebytes details the programs and websites that promise software emulators, but deliver big trouble for users.

Chris Boyd, malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes Labs, chronicles just some of the programs and websites he found waiting for unsuspecting victims to wander in and make the mistake of downloading one of the many loaded programs masquerading as emulators.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that four people have been indicted for allegedly breaching the computer systems of several video game companies and the US military, and stealing software worth over $100 million.

Hacking Group Lizard Squad is taking responsibility for knocking Destiny and Call of Duty: Ghosts servers offline with DDoS attacks today. This is the same group that took credit for a DDoS attack that took down the PlayStation Network last month and took credit for calling in a bomb threat that caused Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley's plane to be diverted.

Twitch users who use chat should be very wary of clicking on links in the chat stream. According to this F-Secure security alert, a link to "csgoprize" showing up in Twitch chats is actually a phishing scam. The message from link posters encourages users to click on the link to participate in a weekly raffle to win Counter-Strike: Global Offensive items.

Over the weekend MMO maker Trion Worlds found itself targeted by a DDoS attack by an unknown party, affecting all of its games - including ArcheAge, RIFT, Defiance, and Trove.

According to TenTon Hammer the attacks started on Sept. 13. Trion Worlds' Twitter account indicated in its last update - which was on Sept. 13, noted that its services were still under attack:

Back in August, Elie Bursztein, the man in charge of Google's anti-abuse research team, detailed how he developed a tool to exploit Blizzard's popular collectible trading card game, Hearthstone. Bursztein gave a lengthy presentation on how he accomplished the hack during the Defcon 22 hacking conference in Las Vegas, but broke from convention by refusing to release his work online.

It looks like 4chan, a place that some might call the filthiest corner of the Internet, is putting a DMCA policy in place. According to this TorrentFreak article, the new policy was put in place in the wake of hundreds of nude celebrity photos being leaked online after being stolen from Apple's cloud service. Some insist that those photos first started showing up on 4chan.

Sony announced via the PlayStation Blog that the online service for its game consoles, PlayStation Network, is back online after a day-long outage caused by a targeted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. PSN and Sony Entertainment Network returned to service at 3 a.m. ET. A statement on the PlayStation Blog from Sony explained that the system was taken offline because of the DDoS attack.

A series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have targeted several popular online games including MMOs RuneScape and Eve Online, according to this Develop report. These attacks have (naturally) caused sporadic outages and limited players' ability to log into these games.

A Russian hacking group claimed responsibility for a recent attack on technology news site CNET. The group claimed that it stole usernames, encrypted passwords and emails for more than one million users. CNET said a representative from the group - which calls itself 'w0rm' - informed it about the hack via a Twitter conversation.

Anti-virus and Internet security research company Malwarebytes points out a common scam used to trick Internet users into thinking that they are visiting a legitimate site when they are in fact at a scam site just itching to steal their personal information or to infect them with some form of nefarious software. The example they use is a site that takes advantage of typosquatting.

Malwarebytes researchers have discovered yet another phishing scheme related to gaming. The latest is a Steam Guard phishing scam that steals users SSFN files and Steam log-in credentials, according to Malwarebytes researchers.

Previous Steam Guard scams would prompt users to upload their SSFN files to a fishing page, but this latest scam goes to great lengths to automate the process. The enticing bait for gamers is a community profile full of items ready for trading.

CD Projekt Red has issued a warning concerning the leak of sensitive internal development documents for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that the developer says will ruin the plot for anyone foolhardy enough to look at them prior to the game's release. The developer says that the leaked documents expose key information, including the ending to the game. The documents appeared on 4Chan and Reddit over the weekend.

Security research firm and anti-virus software maker Malwarebytes is warning players of Valve's popular MOBA game DOTA 2 to beware of nasty phishing schemes. The firm says in a new blog post that there is a new phishing scam making the rounds that offers "rare in-game items in exchange for a Yahoo email address and password," according to Malware intelligence analyst Chris Boyd at Malwarebytes.

Security software maker and security research firm AVAST Software have found several soccer apps that they describe as "ad-overloaded, data-hungry apps." As fans get ready for the World Cup to get underway in Brazil, the offering of soccer-related apps on the Google Play store is big; there are at least 125 different vuvuzela apps available. But AVAST Software is warning those keen to download these apps that some of them are wolves in sheep's' clothing.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, known online as LulzSec leader "Sabu," managed to avoid up to 26 years in Federal prison for his part in several major cyberattacks in 2013. With the help of prosecutors, who lobbied the court heavily on his behalf, Monsegur managed to get a sentence equivalent to the seven months he spent in jail for the crime already.

A former leader of hacking group LulzSec has helped the FBI thwart an estimated 300 cyber attacks since his arrest on hacking charges in 2011, court documents reveal. Hector Xavier Monsegur has helped to prevent losses of millions of dollars, according to court documents filed by prosecutors. Monsegur will be sentenced on Tuesday for his role in major online hacking attacks, but his aid will likely go a long way in getting him a reduced sentence.

Over the weekend military related charity Operation Supply Drop held its gaming marathon '8-Bit Salute' to raise money for sending care packages to military personal deployed in combat zones and recovering in military hospitals. But during this weekend's event hackers decided to ruin everything by taking down the charity's main web site where those who wanted to contribute would have made their donations.

Bohemia Interactive has acknowledged that servers for its popular open-world multiplayer survival game, DayZ have been stolen, but insists that these attacks will not affect the game in the long-term. The game is available via Steam Early Access and still in alpha development. Early reports suggested that the game's source code had been compromised or stolen, but Bohemia did not confirm or deny those reports.

Security researchers at Malwarebytes has a new blog post up talking about the dangers of "sideloading apps," or bypassing the app store on your preferred Android-based device to install games. Malwarebytes say that this practice is "best avoided" because it makes it easier for malware makers to install something nefarious on your device.

The National Security Agency has denied that it knew about or took advantage of the Heartbleed online security flaw. The U.S. spy agency made the statement following this Bloomberg report that it took advantage of the OpenSSL exploit before it was made public by security researchers.

The European servers for several of Blizzard's most popular games suffered from a distributed denial of service on March 30 and 31. According to a post on Battle.net and the European user forums for Diablo III. Blizzard confirmed that performance issues related to several of its games in Europe were affected by attacks and that they are "investigating" the situation.

A Queensland, Australia man accused of allegedly infiltrating and comprising an unnamed video game company's computer network located in the United States has been charged after a joint investigation between local police and the FBI, according to the Brisbane Times.

A web server belonging to Electronic Arts has been hacked and is now hosting a phishing website, according to what Paul Mutton from internet security firm Netcraft uncovered. Mutton said that hackers probably exploited a vulnerability in an online calendar application hosted on the web server to gain entry. The hacking group Derp has claimed responsibility for the hack and the phishing scheme. EA said that it is investigating Netcraft's claims.

Security firm Trend Micro says that there has been an uptick of scams involving a fake Grand Theft Auto V PC beta test. When users take the bait, they end up with an infected PC, according to the firm. If you've been paying attention you are probably already well aware that Rockstar Games has not said that it is making a PC version of its 2013 hit open world action game.

We know that the NSA has been ramping up its efforts to collect data from computers since 911, but as more information from Edward Snowden's cache of lifted NSA documents are made available it is becoming evident that the intelligence agency has already put the necessary tools in place to compromise or hack computers on a grander scale than anyone could have imagined.

Over the weekend Kickstarter revealed that it had been hacked earlier in the week and that, while financial information was not stolen from the site, other user information may have been compromised. The country's largest and most prominent crowd-funding site told users that attackers made off with usernames, e-mail addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords.

Internet security firm Trend Micro is warning those who don't already own Flappy Bird on Android to be careful what they download. According to a blog post from the firm, a number of unscrupulous scammers are taking advantage of Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen pulling his game this week by creating apps with trojans and malware in them.

App store scammers are selling a modified version of Mojang's popular mobile world builder Minecraft: Pocket Edition for Android devices that contains a Trojan, according to anti-virus outfit F-Secure. The fake version of the game, which seems to be aimed at European customers, costs 2.50 Euros - a price too hard for some customers to resist because the real version costs 5.49 Euros.

Ars Technica offers some interesting insights into why the recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that took out EA's Origin service, Blizzard's Battle.net, and League of Legends were particularly potent. According to the report the DDoS attacks used an unheard of method to amplify the amount of data being sent in order to grind many popular online games to a halt.