Akamai Technologies has released a new State of the Internetreport showing that web application attacks on the gaming industry more than doubled over the past year.

The new report, titles Gaming Respawned, notes these attacks come in the wake of booming popularity and demand for cloud gaming platforms.

According to the report, attacks on web applications in the gaming sector puts player accounts at risk of being compromised by cyber criminals resulting in the selling of gaming accounts and theft of personal information including credit card data. The microtransaction market is reportedly expected to reach $106.02B by 2026 creating a massive target for attackers. The report also finds that the gaming industry is targeted for 37% of all DDoS attacks. This is an overwhelming amount as the second most targeted vertical is the financial sector at 22%, Akamai says.

Other key findings of Gaming Respawned include:

• Web application attacks in the gaming sector have grown by 167% from Q1 2021 to Q1 2022, impacting millions of video gamer accounts worldwide.
• The United States is the main target of attackers, followed by Switzerland, India, Japan, the United Kingdom and other nations throughout Europe and Asia.
• Gaming companies are moving operations into the cloud, creating new threat surfaces for hackers.
• Microtransactions - prevalent in the gaming industry - represent a huge draw for criminals who can capitalise on the spending power of gamers without drawing attention to themselves.

"As gaming activity has increased and evolved, so has the value of disrupting it through cyber attacks," says Jonathan Singer, Akamai's senior strategist, Media - Entertainment Industries.

"Cyber criminals typically disrupt live services and co-opt credentials to steal gaming assets. Also, with the industry's expansion into cloud gaming, new threat surfaces have opened up for attackers by bringing in new players who are prime targets for bad actors," he says.

"Our latest report, Gaming Respawned, looks at why and how the gaming industry has become such a worldwide target that attracts cyber criminals, cheaters and money launderers."

"Akamai powers and protects life online. Leading companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital experiences helping billions of people live, work, and play every day," the company says.

"With the worlds most distributed compute platform from cloud to edge we make it easy for customers to develop and run applications, while we keep experiences closer to users and threats farther away."