Beaten By Cheats? Mobile Gaming Needs Ramping Up Of Threat Intelligence And Monitoring

The mobile gaming industry has changed intensely over the past decade. Integration of mobile apps, social networks, and cloud, the diversity of gaming platforms, streaming popularity, and profit model changes to include loot kits indicate that the attack surface is much bigger than it has ever been. Therefore, gaming companies need to prepare and defend against cyber threats that can harm their gamers and must understand the threat types they can face.

According to Akamai's State of the Internet/Security report, gaming companies and gamers were the victims of around 10B cyber-attacks between June 2018 and June 2020, with the increase in both web attacks (up 340%) and credential stuffing attacks (up 224%). Whether bundling malicious software, exploiting vulnerabilities in online gaming platforms, phishing attacks for gamer credentials, scam campaigns, or conducting ad fraud, there're several potential threats that cybercriminals can use to target victims among different parties in the gaming industry. 

1. Phishing Attacks

The same tactics attackers use to trick people into getting their bank passwords, credit card numbers, and other account credentials are also common with gaming thieves. However, in this instance, rather than mocking up a replica of a Bank or the like, cybercriminals create something that appears like a genuine mobile gaming platform and urge gamers to validate their account or change their passwords, typically threatening to block the user's account unless they comply. Then, they aim to take over the gamer's account and resell it on the dark web or black market. 

Therefore, never click any suspicious link given in the text message or email. Instead, open the web browser, enter the game website, enter login credentials, and perform any confirmations or checks there. Ensure to use online protection that prevents the browser from opening scams or fake websites. 

2. Frauds And Cheats

Depending on the type and rules of the game, several ways to cheat always exist – some believed legitimate, some not. For example, some players take benefits of errors they identify in the game's code to play in a better condition, such as with greater precision or speed. Other ways to cheat include fixing games, virtual fraud, using virtual gangs to rob newbie players, etc. As for in-game economies, age-old fraud schemes also arise. To defend against mobile gaming frauds and cheats, never accept suspicious offers from anyone. If you notice any gamer progressing way too fast, notify the support team. Most mobile games have strict rules and regulations and immediately ban cheaters.

3. Inventory And Character Theft

Cybercriminals are likely to target well-developed game characters, in-game resources, associated credit card data, paid game accounts, etc. The latter is the toughest to target, but others can be stolen from you in different ways: in-game fraud, phishing, password-stealing malware, and so on. Consequently, the better your account or character, the higher the attacker's chance to target you specifically. This is relevant for advanced games with loyal, large, and paying audiences worldwide.

Therefore, as you progress, be more cautious with your account. Set up complex passwords and two-factor authentication for your primary email address and in-game account.

4. Bots

Most players are already aware of bots plaguing the gaming platforms' social aspects. It's not uncommon to receive invites or messages from these automated fake accounts trying to begin a conversation. This issue has already been reported for years, and it also relates to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network spambot activity. These messages are used to expand adult content and redirect gamers to sites they don't intend to visit. The social networks' reputation on gaming platforms can be significantly damaged when being used for extensive distribution of such malicious pages and content. 

This issue is yet more significant because of the number of minors on these platforms. Many gaming platforms have methods of reporting bot behavior or inappropriate content. Still, they must take a proactive stance and find methods of identifying and preventing such activities so that gamers are not exposed to them.

5. Bullying And Trolls

Nowadays, almost every mobile game includes some text or voice-based chatting. Unfortunately, this feature is widely abused. In the midst of an online battle, you may see or hear insults or cursing. That may be human nature in a competitive atmosphere, but sometimes, some gamers cross the line into trolling and bullying. 

For this reason, always immediately block the offender, don't chat or play with them, and notify the game abuse team. Never reveal your details or real identity to gaming partners. Ensure to teach your kids that the stranger-danger principle is significantly applicable in online gaming.

6. Man-Made Hacking

Some cybercriminals impersonate the game's customer service staff and lure the gamer with information like jackpots to steal their accounts and passwords. Some fraudsters also send fake information to the gamers, such as so-called official gifts to lure the gamer into a well-designed phishing site similar to the game's official site. The phishing site will acquire the account and password information so that the hacker can transfer game currency, virtual equipment, and other virtual things to get real money offline from them. 

7. Server Maintenance Issue

In addition to hacking issues and virtual data tampering, server maintenance is the common security threat in the mobile gaming industry. Generally, server maintenance requires passing specific parameters forward to achieve normal access procedures. Under normal circumstances, the firewall's parameters are trustworthy. However, parameters outside the firewall aren't worth the server's trust and likely cause potential problems. Therefore, if the server is under maintenance, people must also pay attention to the firewall's parameters. The staff must conduct the verification processes to check if the parameters are valid.

8. Reverse Engineering

The games which get higher popularity are most vulnerable to malware infection and reverse engineering attacks. The underlying art, code, game assets, and data assets can be reverse-engineered by cybercriminals and repackaged to be launched as a clone. These cloned games indirectly impact the original game's reputation.

Challenges In The Gaming Industry

Inadequate Visibility

The gaming landscape is fragmented. Troubleshooting problems need accessing a multitude of several logs. The industry requires a central command to resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

Lack Of Pipeline Support

Gaming platforms operate on DevOps principles, needing prompt updates and software release. Unfortunately, these pipelines' excessive manual monitoring leads to slower issue resolution and wasted developer time.

Inadequate Scalable Investigation

When issues arise, gaming can respond. However, it misses the "why" behind disruptions. Gaming enterprises require tools to leverage big data to analyze insights within minutes.

Inadequate Security

Gaming platforms are entrusted with significantly sensitive information. Therefore, new game frameworks should operate from a data's security-first principle to maintain compliance without restricting game access.

Why Mobile Gaming Needs Ramping Up Of Threat Intelligence And Monitoring

As gaming enterprises struggle to balance user experience, security, and performance, threat intelligence and monitoring could be the path forward. Since games have become more complex and gaming platforms drive more revenue, companies are under pressure to deliver secure and seamless customer experiences. Stakeholders in the gaming industry can implement a multilayered security approach to safeguard applications and players' data proactively. Some robust strategies to consider:

• Game developers ensure that they've disaster recovery and incident response plan strategies to handle anti-fraud procedures and account recovery processes. They must include threat intelligence and monitoring processes along with conducting a risk assessment, determining risk tolerance, identifying external and internal response teams, and creating communication templates.
• Game developers must deploy tools like SIEM (Security Information and Events Management) that churn out actionable data to detect and mitigate threats and empower security personnel. 
• Gaming companies can implement dedicated bot management tools incorporated into a web application firewall to avoid DDoS attacks. Similarly, developers must add device fingerprinting, IP rate detection, CAPTCHA, and in-sessions detection to prevent credential stuffing by blocking automated bots and identifying human users.
• It's no wonder that a guarded building is more secure than a locked one. Similarly, it's advisable to implement a real-time threat monitoring system around the application infrastructure to get real-time alerts for significant threats. This will help developers track attempted cyber-attacks on the app and their frequency and origin. 
• The slightest error in the in-app purchase system can cause the loss of millions for your business. But, you can set intrusion detection in front of the app's backend to detect critical points in the payment system. Moreover, use code obfuscation technique to make it harder for attackers to access the systems.

Conclusion

When it comes to data security, the mobile gaming industry is becoming the prime target of cybercriminals. Despite the series of threats existing on the current stage of mobile gaming platforms, such as phishing attacks, inventory and character theft, bullying and trolls, man-made hacking, etc., these problems aren't unsolvable. For gamers and game developers, robust threat intelligence and monitoring systems, strong data encryption solutions built with advanced identification technologies, and high-performance servers to mitigate in-game security issues are sufficient to clean up the present game network environment. Furthermore, the development of emerging disciplines like artificial intelligence can also contribute to building stable and safer mobile gaming platforms.