Player vs. Hacker: Cyberthreats to Gaming Companies and Gamers

Player vs. Hacker: Cyberthreats to Gaming Companies and Gamers

The video gaming landscape has changed drastically over the past few decades. Some of these changes have led to considerable developments in the cyberthreat landscape as it applies to gaming companies, the games themselves and the user base that enjoys them.


Integration of the cloud, mobile apps and social networks, the diversity of games and platforms, the popularity of streaming, and the change in profit models to include loot kits mean that the attack surface is far greater than it has ever been. For this reason, it is important that gaming companies are prepared to defend against threats to their consumers and that gamers understand the types of threats they can face.


Whether exploiting vulnerabilities in gaming platforms, bundling malicious software with games, conducting ad fraud, phishing for gamer credentials or scam campaigns, there are a variety of threats that attackers may use to find victims among the various parties in the gaming industry.


Software Vulnerabilities


Between the actual games and the platforms that host them, there is the software that makes it possible. And with software comes the risk of security flaws and vulnerabilities that can be exploited by both gamers and external attackers.


Where secure software development fails, companies must be quick to fix flaws and release patches. In August 2019, researchers went public with a zero-day privilege escalation vulnerability in one of the most popular gaming clients, which had previously been responsibly disclosed but not fixed. Around the same time, a major video game company was sued because of a vulnerability in its software that ..

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