As the competitive online gaming and eSports industries gain legitimacy by becoming more popular and attracting mainstream attention, the question of competitive integrity lingers in the back of my mind. Can the game’s developers, community, and users maintain and uphold competitive integrity? Or will they fold under the pressure of greed and complacency?
If we talk about industries that have skyrocketed immensely in recent times, mobile gaming would certainly top the list. However, as fun and profitable mobile games are for users and business owners, they involve unimaginable security risks. Mobile games involve volumes of sensitive user and business data and provide a very profitable setting for cybercriminals to take advantage of.
The online casino industry is a big target for fraudsters, from sign-up bonus abuse through to sidestepping account bans and exploiting business logic to guarantee a profit. This month’s guest on the Cybersecurity Sessions can attest to this – he used to exploit online casinos professionally!
As the pandemic pushed more businesses to an online-first model, cybercriminals seized opportunities to profit from fraudulent activity. But the financial impact of these attacks on businesses has been hard to quantify. Netacea recently surveyed 440 businesses from across the USA and UK to understand how much financial impact bot attacks are having across different industries.
In gaming and betting, it is said that the house always wins. However, some bettors are constantly looking for loopholes to guarantee a profit no matter the outcome of their bets. They have even developed sophisticated software tools to help with a controversial tactic called arbitrage betting, which costs the industry millions each year.
The old saying goes “cheaters never prosper”, but sadly that is not always the case in online gaming. In dark corners of the internet, new ways of cheating at online games – and getting away with it – are being developed on an alarming scale. Both purchasable and “free to play” (F2P) games now offer rewards either in exchange for real world currency or through “grinding” in game, which takes time and effort.
Back in the 90s, gaming companies were mainly occupied with physical security and less with cyber threats. With single-player PC games or consoles like Sega, Nintendo, and PS1, the only perceived threat to gaming companies was someone burning CDs or using the notorious modchip that allowed potential customers to use illegal copies of their favorite games. As technology grew more advanced, gaming companies offered their customers a much more robust experience.
Cryptocurrency (crypto) transactions are solely reliant on the online space. Billions of people have access to online platforms. The autonomy provided by cryptosystems exposes users to more danger as there are no centralized authorities. Thus, expert fraudsters such as hackers may be able to access your transactions via their computer.
Video game security risks are on the rise. Building security into your software development life cycle can help protect your reputation and customers. You’re supposed to have fun and relax when you’re playing video games—maybe with a bit of self-generated competitive stress. What you’re not supposed to do is have to worry about a hacker stealing your personal and financial information.
