Report: Bot attacks involving gambling leap 96% as hackers target Euro 2020
New insight from cybersecurity firm Imperva finds perpetrators ramped up efforts during major sporting event to gain access to digital wallets
Bot attacks on gambling sites spiked 96% year-on-year amid Euro 2020, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Imperva.
The report discovered attacks rose sharply in the weeks preceding the tournament, which kicked off on 11 June, with an increase of 26% in April alone.
In England, bot operators ramped up their efforts when the England national team played, with account takeover attempts leaping by two to three times the daily average when compared to other days during the tournament.
These hostile takeovers see bots gain illegal access to accounts to ransack digital wallets and steal details.
Bot operators uses a variety of methods to complete attacks known as brute force log-in techniques, including credential stuffing, credential cracking or dictionary attacks (systematically entering every word in the dictionary as a password).
Elsewhere, in Germany, bot traffic on gambling sites jumped 41% in the week between the country’s matches against Portugal and Hungary in the group stages.
Imperva also found the pattern of attacks grew as the tournament progressed towards the knockout stage, with a notable peak beginning on 26 June.
Matthew Hathaway, Imperva VP, said with Euro 2020 being the first major tournament held in a post-Covid world, that physical scams such as ticket scalping had given way to digital attempts.
He said: “This level of sustained bot activity is unprecedented for sports and gambling sites and indicates that bot operators are evolving their tactics.
“Nearly a third of Brits gamble every week in some form. That’s a gigantic pool of victims for hackers to target. They only need a tiny percentage of their attacks to be successful to make a profit,” he added.