https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/24/the-video-game-industry-is-a-black-hole-for-cybersecurity/
By Michael Greene
Venture Beat
July 24, 2019
New data from Akamai, an internet delivery and cloud services company, has
exposed that the video game industry remains a growing threat vector for
security breaches. Hackers have targeted 12 billion credential stuffing attacks
against game websites within a 17-month period. Emuparadise, the retro gaming
site, is the latest gaming community to admit having suffered a credential
stuffing attack.
So why is gaming such a weak link?
Industries that have significant financial risk, like banking or ecommerce,
store passwords in robust hashing algorithms that make them difficult to crack.
This deters cybercriminals who look for the easiest and fastest way to breach
systems: credential stuffing attacks. Those are attacks where other sites with
passwords have been hacked, and those names and passwords can then be
attempted.
The rise and success of credential stuffing attacks is a result of people
continuing to reuse the same passwords across multiple accounts. Google
identified that 59% of online users reuse passwords. When a data breach
happens, user credentials are exposed and can subsequently be found on the
internet and the dark web. Cybercriminals use a bot with a list of exposed
credentials against a website to gain access to an account on that site. When
the bots successfully access an account, it’s logged. From there, they can
either takeover the account or they can sell the data to other bad actors for
use at a later date.
The reason that gaming is subject to so many breaches is twofold; No. 1, most
video game companies use low-friction authentication measures because
increasing friction drives customer attrition and results in a loss of revenue.
The second issue is that from a consumer perspective, gaming is seen as having
a low financial risk and, as a result, gamers tend to use less secure
passwords. Adding to these challenges is the fact that game developers are
pressured to deliver more products at a faster pace, meaning there are more
bugs and security issues for cybercriminals to exploit. This has created a
perfect storm in the video game industry upon which hackers are all too eager
to capitalize.
[...]
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