Domain Squatting Analysis of the Gaming Industry: Thousands of Online Gaming-Related Web Properties

The video gaming industry is among the highest-earning entertainment sectors, outperforming¹ the movie industry in the past year. It has also become a favorite of cyber attackers.

We analyzed thousands of gaming-related domains and subdomains to see how prevalent threats are in the industry. Aside from analyzing the overall e-sports sector, our analysis targeted four of the most popular gaming companies—Bandai Namco, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft.

We present our findings in a detailed threat research spreadsheet containing:

• Thousands of domains and subdomains possibly created with the purpose of cybersquatting or impersonating the four gaming companies

• Several gaming-related domains and subdomains flagged as malicious, including malicious domains and subdomains resolving to active IP addresses

• Data showing a deep WHOIS and DNS contextualization analysis, which revealed that thousands of domains and subdomains in our dataset cannot be publicly attributed to legitimate gaming companies

Download the spreadsheet now to access the complete list of identified artifacts used to conduct additional enrichment and threat analysis.

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• [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/videogames-are-a-bigger-industry-than-sports-and-movies-combined-thanks-to-the-pandemic-11608654990