Hackers Attempt To Extort Electronic Arts (EA), Fail, Then Leak Source Code
2 minute read | Last updated 2-Aug-2021 |
Cybercrime, Security
EA got hacked and 780 GB of source code was stolen. The hackers attempted to extort EA and when they didn’t pay, the data was dumped online.
More in this short…
Transcript
In June criminals broken the game publisher EA’s systems through a series of steps that started with stolen Slack keys.
Now they took over 780 gigabytes of game code, build tools, and more. And then the criminals tried to extort EA into paying for the safe return of the data.
[00:00:14] Now, when they didn’t pay, they started to leak the data out and then just recently dumped it all online.
Now why wouldn’t EA pay?
Well, because they did a solid risk analysis. No customer data was involved just source code and build tools. These can’t be commercialized easily and would end in lawsuits if they were 78% of year revenues comes from consoles, which are much harder to attack than PC installs.
[00:00:35] So there’s a slight risk of privacy issues or cheating, but given the online nature of competition, that’s negligible.
Their only significant risk was to their reputation. And given that they’re the victim here, why would they pay?
Not only do these criminals break the law, they overplayed their hand.
References
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CNBC can confirm that the data stolen from EA Sports and posted to the dark web this week includes source code to the massively popular soccer game FIFA ‘21. Here’s the threat from the hackers to release more if they don’t get paid. pic.twitter.com/BYyw9kNdQz
— Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) July 29, 2021 -
NEW: Hackers leak full EA data after failed extortion attempt
— Catalin Cimpanu (@campuscodi) July 31, 2021
-751TB of compressed data containing FIFA 21 source code was published on Monday
-Hackers asked for $28 million for the data
-They later tried to extort EA but the company wasn't having ithttps://t.co/jbOFzaliPY pic.twitter.com/WRHP0HqpS9