Advanced Television

Research: Gamers hit with 14m credential stuffing attacks daily

September 30, 2020

According to data from the Atlas VPN research team, gamers are hit with 14.02 million credential stuffing attacks daily.

A successful credential abuse attack steals the victim’s account and puts the owner’s credit card information as well as in-game assets at risk.

While the issue of credential abuse attacks is rarely talked about, data reveals that it is a wide-spread issue. Hackers attacked gamers a staggering 9.83 billion times from July 2018 to June 2020. In other words, players are hit with around 14 million attacks per day or 584 thousand attacks per hour.

Rachel Welch, COO of Atlas VPN, commented: “While credential abuse attacks are rarely discussed, data reveals that it is a wide-spread issue.”

Data shows that top 5 countries are responsible for 49.32 per cent of all fraudulently login attempts to user accounts. The US, Russia, Canada, China, and Germany are responsible for 4.85 billion attacks out of the 9.83 billion intrusion attempts globally.

It appears that most credential abuse originates from the US. However, it is worth noting that hackers often change their IP address when carrying out these attacks. Meaning, the locations provided should be looked at with a grain of salt. Even so, the number of attacks remains correct. The fact is that the top 5 locations are responsible for over 6.92 million attacks per day or more than 288 thousand attacks per hour.

A study asked players what they are most worried about if their account gets hacked? The most common answer was credit card information, with 49.1 per cent of respondents stating it as their biggest concern.

Losing access to their account was the biggest problem for 47.7 per cent of survey respondents, while 42.1 per cent of players were concerned about their in-game assets. In game assets include special weapons, skins, unique tools, and similar.

The concern of losing in-game assets is valid as a single special weapon can cost hundreds of dollars and, in rare cases, up to thousands of dollars.

Categories: Articles, Games, Research

Tags: