The video game industry is a black hole for cybersecurity

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

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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