Mass Effect EA Editor Blackmailed Data Hacking

Last month, pirates stole sensitive information of FIFA and Battlefield 2042 publisher Electronic Arts, including source code for the Frostbite game development engine, owned by the company. Now hackers seem to be throwing coins online to pressure EA to pay them, according to a new report from Motherboard.

“A few weeks ago we send an email for a ransom [sic] to EA but we get no response so we will post the src Kotaku”reads one of the hacker forum posts, Motherboard reports.

The site also says it viewed a copy of a 1.3 GB compressed file released by hackers, which includes “references to EA’s internal tools and the company’s Origin store.” If EA doesn’t start paying, the group has threatened to disclose even more stolen data.

The game publisher confirmed this in a new statement to Motherboard.

“We are aware of recent publications of suspected hackers and we are analyzing the published files,” said an EA spokesperson. “At this time, we continue to believe that it does not contain any data that may infringe upon the privacy of players, and we have no reason to believe that there is a material risk to our games, our business or our players. “

The company added that it has implemented new security measures since the breach and continues to work with law enforcement to catch those responsible.

The EA hack is just one of many recent ransomware attacks against the big game companies. The pirates claimed leave with more than 1 TB data stolen from Capcom last year, resulting in potential leaks from several big games, like Street fighter 6 and Dragon dogma 2, which the company may be working on but has yet to be officially revealed. Earlier this year, Cyberpunk 2077 the manufacturer CD Projekt Red was also affected and — in the middle of E3 last month– ultimately confirmed that the breach was serious enough to potentially have included personal information about workers and contractors, in addition to sensitive data from its games. The pirates claimed to have sold parts of this data as well.

No one is quite sure why these hacks are all happening now, but it certainly seems like a lot of it could have to do with the working home setups we’ve seen in the wake of the ongoing pandemic. Capcom has said the same in his report on his own data breach, citing “the increasing burden on the Company’s network resulting from the spread of COVID-19” as a key factor.

Many operations also don’t seem very sophisticated, at least on the ransom side. Motherboard reports that, at least in EA’s case, the hackers involved actually tried to get the website to blackmail the game publisher on their behalf.

“Motherboard refused to do so. Now the hackers have themselves publicly broadcast their extortion attempt.

Genius level shit.