by Mayra Rosario Fuentes and Fernando Mercês
Esports has evolved from niche entertainment into a highly lucrative industry. Growing ad revenue and sponsorships allow the tournaments to grow; and as the tournaments grow, the prize pool grows as well. Of course, growing popularity and increased funds open up the entities involved to cybercriminals looking for any opportunity to make a profit.
Cheats and hacks are widely available in underground markets, catering to players looking for an unfair advantage in tournaments. Criminal groups have also been known to leverage distributed denial of service (DDoS) and ransomware attacks, zero-day exploits, data breaches, and targeted malware for a profit.
We predict that more threats will target the growing esports industry over the next few years. Here are four threats that we expect to increase in the near future:
Hardware hacks
Professional tournaments often allow players to bring in their own hardware, such as a mouse and keyboard. Other specialized methods have also been crafted to get around cheat-detection mechanisms. For example, in 2018, “Ra1f” was caught using an advanced hardware cheat for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which was able to bypass ESEA anti-cheat technology.
This is how it worked:
The main computer has both CS:GO and the needed ESEA client (anti-cheat software) installed, like any other ordinary CS:GO installation
The second computer (let’s call it the “attack PC”) has a special software installed ready to receive data
The main computer has a physical DMA (Direct Memory Access) device plugged into a PCI Express (PCIe) slot
A USB cable connects the DMA device to the attack PC
The DMA device sends data via the USB ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
