On June 23, Hyderabad player Siddhartha Anumula posted a message on Twitter, stating that he had been the victim of a crime on Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN).
Anumula was first released from her PSN account on June 17. After this, the criminal used credit card details stored in Anumula’s account to buy games worth R11,000. Sony then suspended Anumula’s account for a refund.
Anumula’s anger is just an example. As the Indian gaming market grows, online attacks on players have become more prevalent.
Three out of four players in India have experienced some form of cyber attack on their game account, according to a November report by security company NortonLifeLock. Four out of five gamers lost just under R8,000 on average as a result of the attack, the report said.
“With the advent of real money games and more engineers building in-app purchases in their gaming and more extras within the games themselves, there is a greater chance of criminals capturing high-value data such as banking information and personal identifiers,” he said. Siddhartha Pisharoti, vice president of the region – India, South East Asia and Asia-Pacific Japan, Akamai Technologies.
Today’s gaming applications are “no different” from fintech and banking systems, which store personal identification information (PII) in transaction, says Pisharoti.
Read More: Valve bars blockchain games that allow trading of NFTs from Steam
Media practices have changed dramatically since the epidemic. In August, market research firm ENV Media Analysts reported that major app and game distributors, including Google Play and Apple App Store, saw a 50% drop in engagement over the past year. About 62% of Indian players interviewed in the Norton study said they started online games during the violence.
Like most users, gamers can be easily targeted because of their online behavior. Many gamers admit to engaging in “harmful behavior” online, such as sharing personal information, repeating the same username, passwords and so on, says Ritesh Chopra.
Players are not the only ones who are in danger. Gaming firms have seen an increase in attacks as well. Akamai recorded a 340% annual increase in attacks on the sports industry last year, Pisharoti said. “Input verification information” and “bot attacks” exceeded 224 percent, he said.
Data verification is a form of online attack where attackers use data obtained from a single data breach to log in to unrelated services. In bot attacks, hackers use automated web applications to deceive users, hack resources and steal data.
The attack has grown “over the past few years,” admits Amit Sharma, chief technology officer, Dream Sports, the parent company of Dream11’s dream stadium.
Akamai also noted that although the volume of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks decreased by 20%, those that occurred were still “large” and disrupted game play connections. In this attack, cybercriminals disrupt services by covering servers with default traffic.
“We have seen an increase in the number of cases where malicious agents are able to deceive the board of directors and break the most important trust for the industry to succeed,” Pisharoti said.
Gaming enthusiasts are ignoring the best online practices in order to move forward, while gaming firms often put security at the forefront as they rush to launch new games, he noted.
Read More: Xbox Controller Update Makes It Easier To Pair With And Switch Between Devices
Finally, the growing interest in non-voting tokens (NFTs) and block chain games is another factor that makes targeting players more profitable.
Chopra said there have been many cases of “game developers who have copied their work without permission” and have been sold as NFTs.
This process is known as “sleeping” and can allow a cheater to make NFT out of a game developer wallet and restore it to his account without warning.
Certainly, game companies are taking steps to protect themselves as well.
Dream Sports said it has a security team that oversees app security, data security and cloud security. The company also has a distraction benefit program and conducts regular login tests with the help of cybersecurity companies.
“Internal teams also work closely with our developers to ensure that there is no risk when things go live. We also review the tools carefully before using them, “said CTO Sharma. Winzo-focused regional language playground also said spending money on Internet security was a” priority “for the company.
