Hackers Steal Wealth of Data from Game Giant EA (vice.com) 39
Hackers have broken into gaming giant Electronic Arts, the publisher of Battlefield, FIFA, and The Sims, and stole a wealth of game source code and related internal tools, Motherboard reported Thursday. From the report: "You have full capability of exploiting on all EA services," the hackers claimed in various posts on underground hacking forums viewed by Motherboard. A source with access to the forums, some of which are locked from public view, provided Motherboard with screenshots of the messages. In those forum posts the hackers said they have taken the source code for FIFA 21, as well as code for its matchmaking server. The hackers also said they have obtained source code and tools for the Frostbite engine, which powers a number of EA games including Battlefield. Other stolen information includes proprietary EA frameworks and software development kits (SDKs), bundles of code that can make game development more streamlined. In all, the hackers say they have 780gb of data, and are advertising it for sale in various underground hacking forum posts viewed by Motherboard. EA confirmed to Motherboard that it had suffered a data breach and that the information listed by the hackers was the data that was stolen.
Another reason not to run games as superuser (Score:3)
Another good reason not to run games that require you to run them as the superuser, because eventually their code may be compromised and exploits galore over the network. Currently, there are a handful of games that require you to run (not just install) them as the superuser.
EADesktop.exe is Garbage (Score:1)
I can't use EA games from Gamepass on my PC because EADesktop.exe shows an error message, and can't be uninstalled, and can't be re-installed.
It's just permanently broken.
EA is the fucking ruiner of games.
Should we start a new news website? (Score:2)
One that just covers hackers and security breaches? It's getting tedious hearing about the increasing level of crime in cyberspace.
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Since I work in that area, my degree and experience are getting worth more with every such story. Hence no tedium here ;-)
I do understand your stance though.
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The media coverage makes it feel like we're not making any headway. For what it's worth most of my team have gone through training for threat modeling, it mostly focused on STRIDE. I'm not saying we all came out as security experts, but it is a pretty big deal to at least have all developers exposed to the idea of security and have some practical knowledge. The big change was when we formulized security as part of our product life cycle planning.
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I agree. Significant headway is being made in many places. There are just quite a few companies where the "leadership" is asleep at the wheel. Of customers I audit, two got hit recently. For both I did a "ransomware readiness" IT audit question last year, both came out as "reasonably prepared" and both were up again from backups in 2 days with the attack vector fixed and nothing paid to the criminals. That is pretty good IMO. Sure, it would be better if the attackers did not even get in, but unless MS and s
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Yes, with none of the current editors whose choices are lazy, scattershot, and frequently avoid parent links in preference for "normie" entertainment sources.
It should be called (something)dot in memory of a once great site run into the ground out of sloth and blatant passive-aggressive malice.
And you force Origin installs (Score:2)
TPB4EVAR
Payment Options: (Score:3, Funny)
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The hackers have stated that EA can buy back half of the code with one initial lump sum payment and the rest will come in 15 equal installments of 2/3 the price of the initial lump sum for each installment.
Or what?
Are they under some delusion that the code is worth anything to anyone other than EA, who still have a copy?
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Or what?
Are they under some delusion that the code is worth anything to anyone other than EA, who still have a copy?
Probably. The in actual reality the only worth the code would have is to embarrass EA if (and only if) it is exceptionally obviously shoddily written. No other value. Learning things from it probably takes longer than doing it from other sources. Using it comes with an exceptionally high risk of having that use detected and getting sued into the ground. Nobody smart will touch that code.
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Using it comes with an exceptionally high risk of having that use detected and getting sued into the ground. Nobody smart will touch that code.
not necessarily. but more likely that those are portions of the inhouse toolchain and engine which will be of very little or impractical use to anyone without insider knowledge or using the same environments/processes. unless there is some bizarre valuable secret buried, you would be far better off by using any commercial engine and tools or even rolling your own than trying to unravel that particular spaghetti mess and figuring out how to use it, not to mention managing it at the support level.
the only rel
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Worst case for EA, the code could contain proof that EA were stealing code or resources from someone else. I wouldn't put it past them.
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Now that is a good point.
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To have this EA standard business procedure joke explained to you will cost $15.
Code is worthless (Score:2)
Learning from it takes too much effort compared to other ways. Copying it may well get you sued into the ground. Nobody smart will touch this poisoned offering.
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But...but...slashdot tells me information wants to be free?
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Not sure what your point is. One thing doesn't conflict with the other.
"Information wants to be free" just means "information tends to naturally spread, and you need to exert effort to restrict it". Which has nothing to do with legal issues.
So, as "per information wants to be free", it's out there and it's unlikely anybody will be able to stuff that genie back into the bottle.
And as per "it's illegal", companies won't touch this with a 10 foot pole.
But it'll still spread all the same, among people who alrea
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Well, yes. But I expect the NSA TAO (for example) already has access to that code.
This follows news that a dev was selling power ups (Score:3)
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Mass Effect Andromeda (Score:1)
Stolen specs (Score:2)
My former employers had a data breach some years ago. The network people noted unusually high data transfer between our main server and the outside world. A couple of months later counterfeit copies of our hardware started appearing. The software that goes with it is written in an idiosyncratic style that takes some getting used to, so good luck doing anything with it. :-)
Since the company imploded not long afterwards nothing was ever done about it. Nothing to do with the data breach, a change in the mark
How does that amount of data get exfiltrated? (Score:1)
..without detection?
No IPS?
MICROS~1 strikes again .. (Score:1)
They got a lot more than that... (Score:2)
the hackers said they have taken the source code for FIFA 21
So essentially they have the source code for FIFA 2020, FIFA, 2019, and FIFA 2018 as well.
I hope they got one thing (Score:3)
I hope they got the source and creator files for Sid Meiers Alpha Centarui and I hope that someone takes it and upscales it. That would be sweet.
And the biggest reveal (Score:3)
FIFA 2022 will be FIFA2021 with a slightly changed colour tone, a new logo, and every time you kick the ball $1 gets deducted from your bank account.
Huh. EA is still around? (Score:2)
I don't think I've bought a game from them since the 1980s. They had some hot titles in the 1980s.
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It might be more accurate to say that EA acquired other companies which had some hot titles.
Time to open source to the community? (Score:1)