E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA), one of the largest competitive video gaming communities on the planet, was hacked last December. As a result, a database containing 1.5 million player profiles was compromised. IT security experts from Tripwire, ESET and Positive Technologies comment below.
. Tyler Reguly, Manager of Software Development at Tripwire:
“There is a lot of money in video games and the in-game items associated with them. There are several websites that provide exchange rates for in game currency or items to real world dollars. Assuming credential reuse, gaining access to one set of credentials could allow you to gain access to various game accounts which would allow you to trade away or sell the in-game items. The concept of exchanging in-game assets for real currency is known as RMT (real money trading) and can be very lucrative. Some items can translate into thousands of dollars and, among the rarest of these items, are often the rewards for winning report tournaments. It is not unheard of for gamers to “retire” and pay for some, or even all, of their post secondary education by selling off entire accounts. Combine all of this with slow response rates from gaming company customer support and the fact that they often only punish the buyer rather than catching the seller, this is a very lucrative method of illegally making money.”
“Gaming entities and online profiles can be worth “real life” money, not to mention in some games the ability to sell in-game items for actual money can reap large payloads for some unscrupulous individuals. Gaining access to those accounts can be achieved by many ways, using malware to harvest login credentials or phishing scams to either trick the user into entering their details to “keep their account safe” or trying to validate a scam email by including something they can relate too. The details leaked from this breach could enable someone to do just that. The leaked records included the usual personal information – registration date, city, state (or province), username, email address, date of birth etc. It’s the Steam ID, Xbox ID, and PSN ID that are more likely to be used for further scams. You should always be extra vigilante of any emails or even calls you receive that want you to validate your login or any other personal information, check your financial statements and of course change any affected passwords from this breach.”
“Source code scanners are actively used now both by hackers and security analysts. As our research show, you can find 10 times more vulnerabilities if you do source code analysis with proper automated tools compared to “black box” analysis when you don’t see source code. These findings could be used for new attacks – or for proactive defence (when the vulnerabilities are found by security an expert, this information is used to fix the code or to add virtual patches to an application firewall).
“As to TruffleHog, it is interesting tool but there are some drawbacks. First, this tool shuts down from time to time when it meets some special Unicode in the commits. Second, the “high shannon entropy” could be found in many different types of strings: GUID identifiers, tricky names of variables, obfuscated code et cetera. It leads the scanner to the high number of false positives. So, this method (in its current application) could be used to find “interesting elements” of the code but it requires a huge amount of manual analysis of those findings. It’s the most common problem for many source code scanners.
“However, this method could be developed toward more automated security scanner if machine learning is used: a statistical model that knows about possible GUID’s and other special features of the system may reduce the number of false positives.”
ISBuzz Team embodies the collaborative efforts of the dedicated staff at Information Security Buzz, converging a wide range of skills and viewpoints to present a unified, engaging voice in the information security realm. This entity isn't tied to a single individual; instead, it's a dynamic embodiment of a team diligently working behind the scenes to keep you updated and secure. When you read a post from ISBuzz Team, you're receiving the most relevant and actionable insights, curated and crafted by professionals tuned in to the pulse of the cybersecurity world. ISBuzz Team - your reliable compass in the fast-evolving landscape of information security
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.