Electronic Arts Inc., the video-game giant behind the Battlefield, Sims and Madden NFL franchises, is the latest high-profile victim of a cyberattack, with hackers stealing its source code and related internal tools.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen,\u201d the Redwood City, California-based company said Thursday in an email. \u201cNo player data was accessed, and we have no reason to believe there is any risk to player privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The loss wasn\u2019t extensive and isn\u2019t expected to affect games or Electronic Arts\u2019 business, the company said.<\/p>\n
Electronics Arts didn\u2019t provide other details of the attack, but hackers going by the name Kickass on the XSS cybercrime forum took credit for stealing a trove of data from the company. They first advertised the stolen data in a locked chat room on XSS earlier this week, claiming to have the original software-development kit for Microsoft Corp.\u2019s Xbox console, along with keys to crack FIFA 21, FIFA 22 and FrostBite.<\/p>\n
In all, the hackers are trying to sell about 780 gigabytes of game data, according to the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have full capability of exploiting on all EA services,\u201d the hackers claim in their post, a screenshot of which was shared with Bloomberg News by a person with access to the secret chat room.<\/p>\n
Electronic Arts has tightened security since the incident and is \u201cactively working with law-enforcement officials and other experts as part of this ongoing criminal investigation,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n
Motherboard previously reported on the incident, which sent shares of Electronic Arts down as much as 2.4% on Thursday. The stock recovered most of those losses and was little changed at the close.<\/p>\n
\u201cBreaches are so common at this point — it\u2019s probably just a minor black eye for them,\u201d said Doug Clinton, a managing partner at Loup Ventures. \u201cThere\u2019s always the chance for there to be more to the story, but odds are this is forgotten in a few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also unclear whether anyone can make use of the stolen material.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks like source good to games and the engine, not user data,\u201d said David Cole, owner of video-game industry research firm DFC Intelligence. \u201cThe issue in that case is what will the hackers do with it? They can try and sell it, but will anyone buy it or be able to use it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Often when data leaks out, \u201cno one can really do anything with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Electronic Arts, the video-game giant behind the Battlefield, Sims and Madden NFL franchises, is the latest high-profile victim of a cyberattack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":235528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,27],"tags":[2414,6288],"class_list":["post-401303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","category-security","tag-ea","tag-electronic-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}