A new report released by Prolexic revealed some very interesting information about connections between the online gaming community, DDoS attacks, and fraudulent activity.

Keep hustling to the finish line. (1)

Prolexic is a leading provider of managed DDoS protection, security services and threat intelligence to enterprise organizations around the globe. The company was founded in 2006 as a specialist in DDoS mitigation and currently has over 1,000 customers in over 100 countries. Prolexic employs its proprietary DDoS management platform to provide advanced, real-time insights into traffic patterns that are analyzed for possible malicious activity.

Prolexic revealed that while many keen gamers commit to leisure activities, they also suffer from frequent attacks. During 2019 alone there has been a significant increase in the number of DDoS attacks which was highlighted by Prolexic’s annual report. DDoS attacks can be very hard to deal with, but gamers need to realize that the risk comes with being in the spotlight and building a reputation for themselves. Avoiding these types of attacks requires taking several precautions; however, it’s not always possible when you don’t know how your monitor will react or what DDoS defenses your provider will work out for you.

Online gaming infrastructures and devices have created opportunities for malicious actors to launch DDoS attacks. These attacks are a long-standing tradition in the gaming community and happen frequently. Denial of Service Attacks are very common in online games, as they can take down online infrastructures without much effort.

Dedicated Denial of Service attacks are a growing threat, especially against gaming networks. DDoS attacks fueled by rivalries, poor security protocols and readily available DDoS tools pose an ongoing threat for websites of all types. Online games are a popular form of entertainment that generally do not provide any form of security to prevent attacks. As a result, hackers can easily breach the system and take over. To ensure players are safe, highly-secure gaming servers have been introduced so as people who join the game will be less vulnerable. “They will either be stealing currency from players or selling things to them that would not be available otherwise.”

A Prolexic customer in the financial industry was the target of a DrDoS attack from an unknown source, also known as an amplification attack. The original goal was to bring their website down, but their software detected this and prevented any such harms. DrDoS attacks use misconfigured game servers as intermediary victims to reflect traffic back and amplify network activity against them. With over

As is common in DDoS attacks, the malicious actors increased the power of their DDoS attack against a financial services firm. This made it possible to do so by combining stalling tactics with reflection and amplification techniques. Thousands of gaming servers in a single coordinated attack on one target. This was achieved by sending out multiple requests at once to different servers. The attackers were able to co-opt other game servers with the false request, and repeatedly until they achieved their goal.

Prolexic’s DDoS mitigation service stopped the attack.

PLXsert has created a lab to replicate the attack on Call of Duty 2 servers that took place across the world. Teams around the world are able to learn more about their systems prior to potential attacks and use safe VR experiments in order to prevent these types of situations from happening.

In the white paper, the Prolexic Security Engineering & Response Team (PLXsert) explains why DrDoS attacks can be so damaging by focusing on how they work.   

DDoS attacks occur in online gaming communities for various reasons, but not all of them are bad and many gamers do not realize the significance of DDoS attacks.

  •     DrDoS attacks have been a common occurrence in online gaming following the first one in 2011. The games industry has tried many initiatives to deter these vicious attacks, but it is not perfect.
  •     Many DrDOS attacks use gaming servers in order to carry out their attack – including Quake, Half Life and Call of Duty.
  •     A case of a Distributed Denial of Service Attack against a financial services company
  •     The growing market of DDoS-as-a-Service tools have been used in cyber attacks and are now being used illegally by those looking to disrupt online gaming communities.

The white paper, Prolexic’s latest offering in its DrDoS series, is available for free at http://www.prolexic.com/gaming

The laboratory-created proof-of-concept attack script will be available on the official PLXsert GitHub page located at http://www.github.com/plxsert .

The Prolexic Security Engineering & Response Team (PLXsert) provides malware detection, DDoS mitigation, and advanced threat analysis globally. With their modern equipment and experienced personnel, they are the leading company that can make your business safe from malicious cyber threats. Post attack analytics in this case means analysis of what types of tools were used and how. Data forensics and data analysis can be conducted to build a global view of DDoS attacks. This is shared with customers through PLXsert. The PLXseert team helps organizations identify the source of DDoS attacks to make better-informed, proactive decisions. By analyzing patterns and associated information about each attack, they help make sure your network is safe.

Prolexic is one of the most well-known players in the DDoS mitigation industry. You can find out more about their DDoS mitigation related activities, tactics and origins of global DDoS attacks in the quarterly reports you can find on this website.

Prolexic is the world’s largest and most trusted DDoS mitigation service. They successfully absorbed the largest attack on record by it outsmarting the hackers. Prolexic restores mission-critical Internet-facing infrastructures for global companies. In 2003, Prolexic was founded and is now the world’s leading DDoS mitigation company. They help protect over 10 of the largest banks, NASDAQ and more. Prolexic’s headquarters are in the United States and its scrubbing centers are located in North America, Europe, and Asia. Whether you have concerns about DDoS attacks or want to learn more about how Prolexic can protect your business.

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