Online gaming companies are increasingly becoming soft targets by DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attackers. It all started with attack on Blizzard that is famous for World of Warcraft game. On the very next day, makers of Battlefield 1 Electronics Art were hit by DDoS attack that resulted in extensive damage across a plethora of games. Interestingly, the responsibility for both these attacks was claimed by PoodleCorp via Twitter.

Rising trend of DDoS attacks on game sites

Incidents such as these represent only the tip of a gigantic iceberg of DDoS attacks looming large on several gaming companies. It has exposed vulnerabilities of online gaming companies to DDoS attacks that are targeted with a variety of different objectives.

DDoS attacks are being focused more on particular sites that seem to be marked or hit-listed by the attackers. It also appears that the attackers are not interested on targeting console gamers since the major attacks on gaming industry occurred around this year’s SuperBowl. As against just fifteen attacks in last year’s first quarter, the same period of current year witnessed a whopping 29 attacks by targeted sites.

Why attack gaming portals

Some of the evil motives of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attackers that have been identified are establishing image of the hacker, forcing other gamers to go offline. It is disturbing to note that gamers themselves are engaged in such attacks to prevent other gamers from progressing further. 

Gaming portals are the easiest and the most favorite targets of DDoS attackers due to the fact that these can be easily attacked in the absence of any security provided by state of the art DDoS protection.

In addition to this the attacks also result in diverting company’s resources by focusing on the primary target. There is also a possibility of extracting money in the form of Bitcoins to follow what was done by DD4BC group. The true objective of almost all attacks remains to be that of data exfiltration.

DDoS attackers are getting better at their game

The surprising ease with which the attackers seem to pick their targets and cause damage can be attributed to their enhanced ability of acquiring the attack platforms. The most frequently hit gaming site received three attacks per day on an average. This proves that the attacks were clearly aimed at exhausting the enterprise’s resources.

In spite of the shady objectives, it is now a well established fact that the attackers have developed abilities to cause extensive damage by adopting the software for DDoS attacks that can be easily used even by non technical individuals and is often accessible from the dark web at dirt cheap prices or even for free. It is also observed that hackers use rising number of DDoS services that can be availed at reduced costs.

Understanding vulnerabilities of gaming sites

The most vital requirement of any gaming portal is uninterrupted availability. Service breaks are not only responsible for lost revenues but can also tarnish image of the gaming provider company causing irreparable loss of overall reputation and brand loyal customers.

Sensitivity of gaming networks to latency and online availability make them ideal candidates of DDoS attacks. There is always an element of predictability as far as traffic spikes are concerned in online gaming industry. Announcement of new releases, seasonality of gaming including holidays and festivals, are some of the factors responsible for the high predictability.

It is observed that gamers experience latency or downtime even if there is no DDoS attack. Continuous resource consumption to the optimum capacity of gaming servers exposes them to DDoS attacks due to threshold mitigation. There are many instances of crippling of servers on account of games that feature MMO competitive action requiring rapid response time.

It is virtually impossible to distinguish between a legit gamer and a DDoS bot due to extreme lack of information about the nature of reaction of legit users to custom network protocols. Gaming providers are forced to compromise access protocols to allow easy access to false positives. This can unfortunately result in allowing an easy access to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attackers.

Conclusion

Since modern DDoS attacks are swift as well as precise, there is no sense in using the traditional security systems that are excruciatingly slow to react to DDoS attacks that are executed with surgical precision. Gaming providers need to find ways to block DDoS attacks by opting for cutting edge solutions.

This calls for state of the art DDoS protection hardware that matches intelligence, speed, and capacity of the modern DDoS attackers. All types of online businesses that depend on uninterrupted availability need to explore more sophisticated security solutions that are designed for rapid response in the event of DDoS attack.

Fortunately, there is a plethora of choices available that can be deployed the latest DDoS defense tools or can access a reliable Web hosting service provider that includes cutting edge DDoS protection in the hosting package itself. The modern day DDoS protection solutions are cable of protecting the interests of clients by ensuring unhindered website availability.