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Gaming & Fantasy Sports

Eliminating Manipulation and Preserving Customer Data in Skill-Based Fantasy Gaming

A market-leading fantasy sports operator asked Payatu to pressure-test two flagship gaming applications. Testers manipulated rewards, tampered leaderboards, and bypassed paid-content controls, exposing gaps that could turn game outcomes into fraud.
Mobile Application Penetration Testing, Web Application Penetration Testing

At a glance

INDUSTRY

Gaming & Fantasy Sports

CLIENT PROFILE

A market-leading skill-based fantasy gaming operator

SERVICES

Mobile Application Penetration Testing, Web Application Penetration Testing

ENGAGEMENT

Black-box · two flagship applications (Android, iOS, Web)

key Numbers

2

Flagship Applications Assessed

2

Critical Findings

5

High-Severity Findings

Key Takeaways

  • Client – a market-leading skill-based fantasy gaming operator running real-money contests at national scale.

  • Problem – growth had outpaced security controls across mobile clients, APIs, and backend services, creating exposure to account takeover, payment abuse, and game-integrity manipulation.

  • What Payatu did – ran mobile (Android and iOS) and web application penetration testing across two flagship gaming applications, testing within shielding controls, a WAF, and geofenced access.

  • Outcome – identified reward and leaderboard manipulation, paid-content bypasses, and account-takeover risks, then delivered a risk-ranked remediation roadmap that closed the gaps before they were exploited at scale.

the challenge

Why the client called us in

Skill-based fantasy gaming had shifted from niche to mainstream, handling real money, verified identities, and high-velocity transactions at national scale, but growth had outpaced controls across mobile clients, APIs, and backend services. The client engaged Payatu to evaluate two flagship applications before adversaries could exploit the gap between scale and security.

  • Identify weaknesses that could expose user data or funds
  • Validate contest and game-integrity controls against manipulation
  • Assess platform availability against abuse and denial-of-service risk

scope of engagement

What was in scope

  1. Mobile application penetration testing (Android)
  2. Mobile application penetration testing (iOS)
  3. Web application penetration testing

Our Approach

How Payatu ran the engagement

01

Discovery & Platform Understanding
Mapped the application platform, frameworks, API routes, and third-party integrations, then studied the business model and stakeholders to frame findings in terms of real-world impact.

02

Static & Reverse-Engineering Analysis
Decompiled Android and iOS builds to review code, manifests, and entitlements for hardcoded secrets, insecure configuration, and RASP bypass opportunities.

03

Dynamic & Local File Analysis
Monitored runtime network traffic and local sandbox storage for insecure data handling and exposed tokens or credentials.

04

Web Application Testing
Combined manual business-logic testing with automated scanning to uncover broken access control, IDOR, and injection-class vulnerabilities across the web platform.

05

Exploitation & Reporting
Validated real-world impact of each finding within the agreed scope, then delivered a CVSS v3.1-scored report with a risk-ranked remediation roadmap.

Key findings

What we found

CRITICAL
Reward manipulation
Players could alter rewards and in-game currency, turning game outcomes into fraudulent payouts.
CRITICAL
Leaderboard tampering
Leaderboard and season ranking values could be tampered with, corrupting contest results.
HIGH
Paid content bypass
Free trial duration, streaming session limits and live content gates could all be bypassed.
HIGH
Ban and score bypass
Banned accounts re-entered by manipulating responses, and client-side games won via IDOR.

the outcome

Results and Impact

Payatu's assessment closed the gaps most likely to cost the platform revenue and trust: unfair wins from reward and leaderboard manipulation, revenue leakage from paid-content bypasses, and account takeover from weak session and OTP controls.

‍

  • Contest logic and access controls hardened against score and reward manipulation

  • Trial, session, and content gates enforced, protecting recurring revenue

  • Session lifecycle and OTP flows hardened against automated abuse and takeover

  • Server-side ban checks made tamper-resistant, reducing repeat fraud

  • Risk-ranked remediation roadmap implemented with owners and verification

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Download the complete PDF - full methodology, findings and remediation detail.

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