Riot Games, studio of the hugely popular video game League of Legends, has revealed that it has suffered a hacker attack resulting in a ransom demand. Cybercriminals stole the source code of at least two games, one of them is League of Legends.
Already a few days ago, on January 20, Riot had announced that it had suffered a hacker attack carried out through thesocial engineering. This methodology exploits the vulnerabilities of some employees to enter the company’s systems. Last night, just days away, Riot posted a series of tweets letting know that the attack was followed by an email with a ransom note.
Hack attack on League of Legends: secure player data
“We received a ransom email today,” said Riot Games. “It goes without saying that we will not pay. While this attack has disrupted our work, and could cause problems in the future, most importantly, no player data or personal information has been compromised.”
Despite reassurances regarding personal data, the theft of the source code could cause many problems for Riot. The company itself has publicly acknowledged these eventualities by stating that “any exposure of source code can increase the likelihood of new cheats emerging. After the attack, we worked on the anti-cheat to be ready to implement fixes as quickly as possible, if necessary”.
Earlier this week, systems in our development environment were compromised via a social engineering attack. We don’t have all the answers right now, but we wanted to communicate early and let you know there is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 20, 2023
The company is currently working with law enforcement to identify those responsible for the attack. We will obviously keep you updated on future developments of this unpleasant story.