Cyber attacks in the gaming sector up 167% in 12 months

A new report by cybersecurity firm Akamai revealed that cyber attacks in the gaming sector have increased by 167% in the last year due to the growth of cloud gaming and other lucrative aspects of the gaming industry.

The report, titled Gaming Respawned, comes roughly a year after hackers stole a wealth of data from gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA). It pointed out that the attacks comprise three key vectors: LFI, SQLi, and XSS. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and ransomware attacks remained major threats, accounting for 35% of all DDoS traffic worldwide.

Attackers’ primary targets are the United States, Switzerland, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and other countries in Europe and Asia. According to the report, microtransactions are a huge draw for criminals who can profit from gamers’ ability to spend money and the fungibility of virtual goods.

Jonathan Singer, Akamai’s senior strategist for the media and entertainment industries, explained that gaming activity has increased and evolved and so has the value of disrupting it through cyber attacks.

To steal gaming assets, cybercriminals typically disrupt live services and co-opt credentials. Additionally, he added that the industry’s expansion into cloud gaming had created new attack surfaces by enticing new players who are easy pickings for malicious actors.