League of Legends Source Code Hacked, Riot Refuses to Pay Ransom. No player information has been stolen but new cheats may be on the way.
On Tuesday, Riot Games announced that the source code of both League of Legends and Team Fight Tactics had been stolen and that it would not pay the ransom demanded by the hackers to get it back. This is the latest in a series of data breaches at major gaming companies and means both games could become increasingly vulnerable to cheaters in the coming months.
Riot Games League of Legends Source Code Hacked, “During the weekend, our analysis confirmed that the source code of LoL, TFT and an old anti-cheat platform was stolen by attackers.” “We received a ransom email today. Needless to say, we will not pay.”
Riot Games announced late last week that their system was "compromised" by a social engineering attack. While no player data or personal information was received, the company said the attack will slow the release of upcoming patches for some of its games.
As of today, the company has not confirmed the exact methods the alleged attackers used to steal the source code of one of the world's most popular multiplayer games, but "social engineered" an employee's login credentials by mistakenly a stranger via a phishing scheme on another platform.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED: Tried To Steal $900K Of Amouranth!
This is how a hacker consumed hundreds of millions of cryptocurrencies from the NFT game Axie Infinity last year. The recent Rockstar Games hack, which led to an unprecedented leak of developing Grand Theft Auto VI materials, occurred in a similar fashion, and the hacker allegedly possibly infiltrating the company via a Slack login it is said. Regardless of the methods, ransomware attacks are clearly on the rise. Cyberpunk 2077 producer CD Projekt Red and Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco are just a few of the other big game companies that have been hacked in recent years.
A spokesperson for Riot Games declined to comment further, but said the company will release a full retrospective of the breach, including attack vectors used by hackers, in the future.
“Since the attack, we have been working to assess the impact on anticheat and be prepared to deploy fixes as soon as possible if needed,” Riot Games tweeted today. However, the company has revealed that the stolen builds also include hidden experimental new features for League of Legends and Team Fight Tactics, suggesting that these could be leaked before any official announcement.
“While we hope some of these game modes and other changes will eventually be noticed by players, much of this content is in prototype form and there is no guarantee that it will be released,” Riot Games wrote.
The company also said that it is currently working with law enforcement on the attack investigation and expects their systems to be fully restored by the end of the week, during which time game updates can begin to resume as normal. Riot Games was one of several gaming and tech companies that laid off nearly 50 employees last week, laying off their jobs.
