Case Study: Stopping Credential Stuffing & API Bots on a Leading Streaming Platform

A case study on fighting bots in streaming: how a major US platform protected ‘The Big Game’

The streaming industry’s biggest strength, its frictionless, device-agnostic access, has become its greatest vulnerability. As streaming viewership soars, fraudsters are exploiting everything from free trials and lax sign-up flows to credential stuffing and API abuse. And bots are leading the charge.

Ahead of American Football’s most-watched event, a major US streaming service knew its platform would be a prime target. Bot operators use high-traffic moments to disguise malicious logins, abuse authentication endpoints, and stress-test infrastructure. Most defenses simply can’t keep up.

Inside the Case Study:

This case study explores how Netacea helped a top US streamer secure its platform during one of the biggest live events of the year without adding friction for viewers or tipping off attackers.

• 5 million malicious requests blocked before, during, and after the event
• 35% of authentication API traffic was malicious, with many of it disguised as Xbox logins
• 0 outages or customer disruptions, even during volumetric attacks
• 0.0001% false positives, preserving CX integrity

Netacea deployed its intent-driven protection through a simple CDN integration, monitoring traffic across apps, APIs, and websites to identify hidden bot activity in real time.

What’s Inside: Research Findings

• A behind-the-scenes look at the bot tactics targeting streaming services, from fake accounts to credential stuffing
• How API-based attacks bypass traditional bot defenses and go undetected for months
• How Netacea’s behavioral analytics blocked sophisticated bots without disrupting the stream
• The real infrastructure cost of fake logins, free trial abuse, and inflated viewer counts
• Key lessons for media platforms balancing CX with security at scale
  

Whether you’re leading platform engineering, fraud prevention, or cybersecurity, this is essential reading to understand how bots target streamers—and how to stop them.

Download the Case Study to see how Netacea protects the streaming industry from its most persistent threat.