It has been announced via Twitter that game developer Riot Games were the victim of a hacking attack last week. They said, “systems in our development environment were compromised via a social engineering attack,” but also assured everyone that that no player data or information was compromised.
Following this, it now seems as though the company has been targeted with a ransom letter, threatening to release obtained stolen source code from two of their titles, League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics, if Riot do not meet their demands. In a series of Tweets posted today, they said, “over the weekend, our analysis confirmed source code for League, TFT, and a legacy anticheat platform were exfiltrated by the attackers.” They then added, “today, we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we won’t pay.”
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
It appears Riot’s main worry is of “new cheats emerging” as a result of the stolen source code. The developers are still assessing if this could result in any issues for League’s anti-cheat system, but promise to apply fixes “if needed.” Another concern of Riot’s is that experimental game modes and features were also stolen. They confirmed that, even if these modes are released online by the hackers, they may never appear in-game.
Riot ended this thread by announcing that they are working with security teams and external consultants to make sure this doesn’t happen again, alongside the help of law enforcement. Hopefully this will turn up information about the hackers, as well as protecting the company from future breaches in security. Riot also guarantees players transparency, and have promised “a full report in the future detailing the attackers’ techniques, the areas where Riot’s security controls failed, and the steps we’re taking to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
We will be sure to keep you up to date on anymore news posted about this situation, so stay tuned to see Riot’s full report at a later date. As always, you can keep your eyes on GameLuster for more gaming news!
