Cyber criminals often attack large companies around the world, such as banks and large telecommunications companies, where they access their servers and steal large amounts of information which are later sold to the highest bidder. The video game industry has also been the target of these great attacks for some time.
The most common attacks against video game companies are of the DDoS type and attempt to capture players’ home data.
The first registered cyber attack took place on November 2, 1988 via the so-called “Morris Worm” (Worm Morris), developed by Robert Tapan Morris, a computer science professor who just wanted to “prove how big the internet really is”. Although Morris’ real intent was to expose security vulnerabilities, it caused $ 100,000 in damage and cost an additional $ 10 million to remove the worm from the network. As a result, Morris became the first person in the world to be jailed for a cyberattack.
Since then, millions of cyberattacks have been carried out, including some targeting video game development companies. Here are some of the most popular:
-CD project red: This is the most recent attack (February 9, 2021) in which a hacker was able to break through the company’s defenses and confiscate the codes for “Cyberpunk 2077”, “The Witcher 3”, “Gwent” and a version of “The Witcher 3” “that was never published.
After the attack, CD Project received a message from the hacker threatening to auction the codes if the company did not meet the requirements within 48 hours. The following tweet from the official CD Project Red account shows the hacker’s message:
Important update pic.twitter.com/PCEuhAJosR
– CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) February 9, 2021
The company did not agree to these demands and the codes were auctioned on the dark internet. While there is no information on who the buyer was, it is known that following a $ 7 million bid and a request not to share the code, the auctions were closed.
Only in: #CDProjektRed AUCTION IS CLOSED. #Hacker auctioned off stolen source code for the auctioned off #RedEngine and #CDPR Game Releases and have just announced that a satisfactory offer has been received from outside the forum, on condition that no further distribution or sale occurs. pic.twitter.com/4Z2zoZlkV6
– KELA (ntIntel_by_KELA) February 11, 2021
-Activity blizzard: Activision Blizzard is often the target of many cyber attacks, particularly DDoS attacks against the various Battle.net servers and game clients. With that in mind, one of the most notorious attacks was that of Calin Mateias, a Romanian hacker who attacked the servers from February to September 2010 and ended up in jail for this reason.
In 2014, Blizzard servers were attacked by Derp Trolling, a group of hackers who took control of the servers and denied users access to games like World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Heartstone, and Diablo 3.
OBJECTIVE ACQUIRED! https://t.co/Y39Zvq0C4s (US) #offline
– Derp Trolling (@DerpTrolling) December 30, 2013
-Riot Games: The company responsible for League of Legends was also the victim of a cyber attack by the hacker group Lulzsec, which was responsible for other attacks on government platforms. During this cyber attack, which took place in 2012, personal data was stolen from users and the Riot Games team.
-Capcom: In 2020, Capcom suffered one of the largest cyber attacks in video game history. Although the company initially decided not to disclose any information about it, they had to confirm in November that they had received a “ransomware” attack and reveal that company employee, company and personal information had been stolen. More than 350,000 customers and users.
Capcom later announced that the attack was carried out by a group of cyber criminals called Ragnar Locker and that they had reached out to the company to solicit a large amount of money. Those in charge of the company put the matter in the hands of the authorities, who opened a secret investigation, so the attack was not announced until some time later.
