-
Millions of people escaped the drudgery of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic by turning to video games that let them cast spells, kill zombies, and compete as their favorite athletes. rice field. These virtual worlds have also attracted another kind of zealot, seeking to steal people’s personal information and real-world money. In recent months, cybersecurity firms have warned that gaming cybercrime has increased significantly since the pandemic began, leaving both game studios and gamers vulnerable.
“Adding users, devices, or applications to your user pool creates a larger attack surface. web applications exploit vulnerabilities in online programs such as mobile games. attacks increased by 167 from May 2021 to April 2022. % year-on-year. And according to a report last month from Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, malicious software attacks against games increased by 13% in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2021.
The range of attacks and targets in the game is huge. Gambling companies may lose large amounts of data and games may go offline temporarily. Individual players can lose game progress, money, and sensitive personal information.
Gaming is the industry most affected by distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), with attackers using automated techniques to bombard servers with requests to compromise services. Slow it down significantly or go offline completely. These attacks can negatively impact a company’s bottom line as they struggle to regain access and resolve customer complaints.
Not all attacks involve exploiting source code or creating compromised links. Some are just scams. Lauro said he once paid a price for his son on the online gaming platform Roblox, and the price never surfaced. However, the transaction was less than his dollar, so his son didn’t mind too much. “Here and there there are 60-cent little deals going on, but who’s going to look into that?” he said.
Akamai warns that as the gaming industry expands, it will attract more cybercrime. “Young gamers are now participating in the gaming ecosystem, so financial crime is happening all the time,” said Lauro.
Thousands or more of these payments or microtransactions can garner hefty rewards for those who carry out such scams.Lauro and other cybersecurity firms say scammers have grown in popularity in recent years. It says they often target small in-game purchases, but there’s no major research on how common these scams are.