Motherboard reported last week that hackers had hacked FIFA 21’s source code from EA Sports. This report was based on an account posted by a criminal forum user on June 6th, in which said he owned a 780GB file backup from EA Sports. EA Sports acknowledged that there had been a data breach but said that no customer information was compromised.
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Cybercriminals might be interested in information that comes from gaming, aside from the EA Sports hack into the source code. This blog will explore the reasons this industry is drawing the attention of security professionals and the top dangers they should be aware of.
WHY ONLINE GAMES AND WHY not now?
It’s not a new trend in online gaming. APT 27 attacked five online gambling companies that were “victims” ofthe attacks in the month of January. They are believed to have targeted them in order to market gambling products to Chinese citizens. APT 41 targeted hundreds of gambling sites on the internet in September2020. According to reports. To reuseonline, sell or reuse online, the attackers stole customer sensitive data, such as software signing certificates as well as the source code.
The companies that offer online gambling must be worried about intellectual theft of property.
Online gaming companies are worried about theft of intellectual property, much like the EA Sports case. These companies frequently assist with creating games and providing software.
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It is reasonable since much goes into creating the game or platform. One of the most difficult aspects of creating games is that they need many teams and work. In order to create games with a large number of players that will appeal to gamers as well as others, developers need to invest between three years. This can be attractive to threats to corporate spying. Cybercriminals are attracted to gambling online because they could gain money through fraud as well as stolen accounts.
In the next section, we will look at the most prevalent threats we’ve seen to the online gambling industrythat include:
DATA BREACHES
Online gaming companies frequently suffer data breaches which are then distributed to criminals, and later sold to them. In 2021, both English-speaking threat actors and those speaking Mandarin tried to sell data on different gaming platforms.
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Photon is planning to sell gaming data online in 2021.
On a dark-internet market, information from an online gambling platform is to purchase.
The data breaches may include various types of data. The following example illustrates that the breach included access to payment, forum, or game databases.
INITIAL ACCESS BROKERS RANSOMWARE
As you will see, the previous section provided an example of a cybercriminal that sold access to online gambling databases. In the last year, these “access brokers” have become more frequent. They offer access to many databases, too. They are also known as “Initial Access Brokers” andmay give credentials to users with high valuelike Domain Administrators.
These access lists provide access to RDP instances, which provide ransomware attackers huge opportunities. Photon recently discovered 90 RDP access listings, each listing costing $9,000 on average. This alarming finding is concerning because RDP access accounts account 70%-80% of initial foothold ransomware operators’ use, according the FBI.
PHISHING AND STOLEN ACCOUNTS
Phishing is the final but not least. Phishing is an increasing threat. The 2021 Verizon DBIR found that 36percent of breaches were due to Phishing. Cybersex has also become a frequent attack.
These emails are phishing and target gaming platforms’ clients and attempt to steal their payment card details or credentials to offer to cybercriminals. In some instances, campaign may also be used to distribute malware.
Employees also suffer. In fact, over half a million credentials belonging to the top gaming publishers were available earlier this year.
Hackers are believed to have made use of stolen cookie information to gain access to the Slack channel in the latest security breach at EA Sports. This type of cookie data can be easily rented at fingerprinting shops like Genesis Market.