The video game company fell victim to social engineering. It affects and delays the update schedule.
Riot Games, the developer of video games such as League of Legends and organizer of esports tournaments, assured this Tuesday that it received an email with a note from ransomware,a type of malware that hijacks data to demand a ransom in exchange for money.
“It goes without saying that we will not pay”, announced the official Twitter account of the company.
When the incident was revealed, Riot Games said that multiple systems in its development environment had been compromised, and that the incident had affected its ability to release new content.
In a series of tweets updating gamers, the company said that the source code for its popular titles League of Legends, Valorant y Teamfight Tactics had been exfiltrated during the attack.
The company warned: “The attack disrupted our build environment and could cause problems in the future.” Most importantly, we remain confident that no data was compromised or player’s personal information“.
Along with the source code for its popular games, the company said the attackers stole information related to “a legacy anti-cheat platform.” Anti-cheat systems are used to prevent players from cheating when playing online.
“In fact, any exposure of the source code can increase the probability that new ones will emerge. cheats (traps). Since the attack, we have been working to assess its impact on anti-cheat and be prepared to implement fixes as quickly as possible if necessary,” the company announced.
Riot said that the code “illegally obtained,contained “a number of experimental features” that might never have made it into the official games.
“While we hope that some of these game modes and other changes will eventually reach players, most of this content is in prototype and there is no guarantee that it will ever be released,” the company said.
Both its internal security teams and a “world-renowned third-party consultant” are evaluating the attack and auditing Riot’s systems, the company said, adding that it had notified law enforcement and was “in active cooperation with them while They were investigating the attack and the group behind it.”
“We are committed to transparency and will publish a full report in the future detailing the attackers’ techniques, the areas where Riot’s security controls failed, and the steps we are taking to ensure this does not happen again,” the statement added. company.
In 2020, the Ragnar Locker ransomware group attacked Capcom in 2020, while the Egregor ransomware gang attacked both Ubisoft and Crytek. cd projekt red, the Polish game developer behind titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher series, was attacked by the HelloKitty ransomware group in 2021, and access to Electronic Arts games and servers was put up for sale that same year following an attack.
How it impacts games
As they explained, the incident will temporarily affect the launch of updates on several of their games until the team finishes working on resolving the issue.
Fans were waiting for the release of update 13.2 in League of Legends on January 25. From the official account of the game on Twitter they assure that they are working to try to launch as many of the changes planned for that date, although some changes such as Ahri’s visual update (ASU) will have to wait for update 13.3, scheduled for February 8.
For his part, the head of League Studio, Andrei van Roon, responded to a comment via Twitter and assured that none of the planned changes will be cancelled.
“Cyberattacks targeting popular game developer companies and studios have increased significantly. In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the video game industry registered an increase in cases of cyberattacks like no other industry, according to a study carried out by Akamai”, explains Camilo Gutiérrez Amaya, Head of the ESET Latin America Laboratory.
“Criminals use different techniques (phishing, malware, attacks on web applications, brute force, etc.) to launch their attacks in search of stealing sensitive user information, compromising access accounts to platforms or to gain access to security systems. the companies. Directly or indirectly, the goal of the attackers is economic”, he adds.
Last year there was one of the biggest hacks, when they managed to leak content from GTA VI, a long-awaited installment by fans, from Rockstar Games.