Online video game portals are increasingly finding themselves under malicious cyber-attack as COVID-19 forces individuals – not all of them honourable – to seek out digital forms of entertainment. 

The third-quarter threat report from distributed-denial of service (DDoS) mitigation specialists NexusGuard found that real-money online gambling and free-play/virtual currency online gaming operators were the two most popular DDoS targets in Q3, although the real-money boys are doing a much better job at defending their turf than their recreational counterparts.

NexusGuard’s numbers show online gambling accounted for 45.2% of all DDoS attacks in the three months ending September 30, while online gaming accounted for 31.7%. Non-gaming sectors such as business, government, education and finance were subject to dramatically fewer attacks. 

The report claims the overall number of attacks remains high, up over 287% from Q3 2019, but represented a 51.3% fall from Q2, during which the pandemic lockdown was more severe and individuals came to rely more heavily on digital connectivity, particularly in terms of entertainment options.