Use case: How Qrator Labs Responded to DDoS Challenges in the Online Game Platform.

With the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and competitive eSports, gaming platforms have become attractive targets for cybercriminals.?

Here’s an overview of the reasons behind this growing threat:

• Financial gain: Online gaming is a lucrative business, with in-game purchases, subscriptions, and virtual economies generating substantial revenue.
• Sensitive data: The vast user base of gamers provides a goldmine of personal information that can be used for malicious purposes.?
• Vulnerabilities: Online gaming platforms rely on complex systems to handle large volumes of concurrent players but fail to defend against security threats properly.
• Competitiveness: Rival gaming companies or disgruntled players may seek to disrupt a competitor’s service to gain an advantage or express dissatisfaction with a particular game or platform.?

Regardless of the motivation, successful DDoS attacks can have severe consequences, making robust mitigation strategies essential for gaming companies.

According to Qrator Labs’ research,?Gaming was among the Top-5 most targeted industries accounting for 9,6% of attacks in Q1 2023.

Qrator Labs’ Client

An online game platform with over 3,000,000 active players faced massive DDoS attacks. The platform offered various online multiplayer games, news updates, private messaging, and in-game transactions

Challenge

Some attackers in the gaming industry may be motivated by the desire to cause chaos and disruption for their own sake. They can act out hatred, revenge, or offense.

The platform was targeted by a knowledgeable attacker who constantly changed attack types, making it challenging to filter the malicious traffic. Seeking a solution to handle this illegitimate traffic and ensure resource availability, the platform turned to Qrator Labs.

Solution

To ensure always-on protection and network resilience, the platform integrated Qrator Labs' antiDDoS service.?

The platform has a complex network infrastructure and a malicious actor used it in his favor. Qrator Labs protected both web apps and servers, addressing security requirements against attacks aimed at IP addresses and ports.

Attacks

On June 5, 2023, Qrator Labs completed the configuration and, at that very moment, mitigated the first HTTP attack on the main site.?

On June 6, the attacker flooded all client resources with malicious traffic.

Late at night, the type of attacks changed from the Network Layer (L3/4) to the Application Layer (L7), this time the traffic volume was not so large. Although, 21,000 IP addresses were blacklisted.

Attacks continued, including a UDP flood on June 13, reaching its peak on June 15. Instead of web resources, the attack was aimed at servers and other parts of network infrastructure.

After that, there were a few more attempts to take down servers with UDP flood, but this time, attacks lost in intensity and became considerably shorter. Apparently, the attackers realized the inefficiency of their endeavors and simply gave up.

With a geo-distributed filtering network, Qrator Labs could detect and mitigate DDoS attacks of any size and complexity in real-time at all OSI levels (including L7), ensuring always-on protection for the platform.?

Using behavioral, heuristic, and signature algorithms, Qrator Labs provides a multi-layer defense and stopped malicious traffic before it could reach the client’s web resources.?

Prompt connection process, a professional team, and deep technical expertise? –– are the key reasons why organizations worldwide trust Qrator Labs to protect their critical apps, networks, and data.