We have heard recently that a hacker has allegedly stolen the source code of Electronic Art’s latest game, FIFA 21. This was carried out several weeks in an attempt to blackmail the game-making studio.
Now according to the latest reports, these hackers have leaked the data related to FIFA 21 online after their negotiations with EA didn’t take off. The whole story goes as follows, and these hackers started their work on June 10th when they made a demand to Electronic Arts for the amount of $28 Million else for the stolen source code of FIFA 21.
According to reports, the total data stolen from the game is about 780GB, and these hackers managed to get their hands on this data by breaching EA’s internal stack channel. This was done through the use of stolen cookies bought online.
The contents of these cookies were nothing but login credentials of EA users in the Slack channel, which allowed anyone with the cookies to log in to Slack. This is a huge breach of data, and these hackers expected to receive some huge load of cash from EA; however, their dreams were crushed shortly after.
After making the huge demand of $28 million from EA and threatening them of leaking the code online, they expected EA to bend down. But the game-making studio did not budge even an inch. EA refused to pay the ransom because the data stolen by the hackers held no sensitive data like user credentials, claimed EA.
So finally, after seeing no alternative, the hackers tried selling the source code to the black market, but unfortunately for them, they met there with a similar type of problem. I mean, if the data does not contain anything sensitive on it, who would want to buy it? Come on, dudes. Buyers showed little to no interest in purchasing source code with no sensitive information, making the purchase almost worthless for illegal activity.
“Following the incident, we’ve already made security improvements and do not expect any impact on our games or our business. We are actively working with law enforcement officials and other experts as part of this ongoing criminal investigation,” stated EA in its official statement.
So, after all the failed attempts, the hackers have now leaked all the data online for anyone to see and use, and people can use the code to play FIFA 21 on their servers. They don’t need any consent from EA; however, the dude buys a copy and plays it legally; that’s my advice.
Since this mishap, EA has tightened its security and is fixing its flaws to not repeat this mistake.
