Riot Games, creators of League of Legends and Valorant, has been attacked by ransomware

Riot Games, the developer of video games such as League of Legends and organizer of eSports tournaments, assured this Tuesday that it had received an email with a note from ransomwarea type of malware that hijacks data to demand a ransom for money.

“Needless to say we will not pay”, announced the company’s official Twitter account.

When the incident was revealed, Riot Games said that multiple systems in its development environment had been compromised and that the incident impacted its ability to release new content.

In a series of tweets updating gamers, the company claimed the source code of its popular titles League of Legends, Valorant and Teamfight Tactics he had been exfiltrated during the attack.

The company warned, “The attack has disrupted our building environment and could cause problems in the future.” Most importantly, we remain confident that no data has been compromised or player’s personal information“.

Along with the source code of its popular games, the company said the attackers stole information relating to “a legacy anti-cheat platform.” Anti-cheat systems are used to prevent players from cheating when playing online.

“Indeed, any exposure of source code can increase the likelihood that new ones will emerge. tricks (traps). After the attack, we worked to assess its impact on anti-cheat and be ready to roll out fixes as quickly as possible if needed,” the company announced.

Riot said the code “obtained illegallyit contained “a number of experimental features” that may never have made it into the official games.

“While we hope some of these game modes and other changes eventually make their way to players, most of this content is in the prototype stage and there is no guarantee it will ever be released,” the company said.

Both its internal security teams and a “world-renowned third-party consultant” are evaluating the attack and auditing Riot’s systems, the company said, adding that it has notified law enforcement and is “in active cooperation with them while They were investigating the attack and the group behind it.”

“We are committed to transparency and will be releasing a comprehensive report in the future detailing the attackers’ techniques, the areas where Riot’s security checks have failed, and the steps we’re taking to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” he added. the statement.

In 2020, the Ragnar Locker ransomware group attacked Capcom in 2020, while the Egregor ransomware gang attacked both Ubisoft and Crytek. Red Project CD, the Polish game developer behind titles like cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher series, was attacked by the HelloKitty ransomware group in 2021, and access to Electronic Arts games and servers went up for sale later that year following an attack.

How it affects games

As they explained, the accident it will temporarily affect the launch of updates on many of their games until the team finishes working on fixing the issue.

Fans have been waiting for Update 13.2 to release in League of Legends on January 25th. From the official account of the game on Twitter they ensure that they are working to try to launch as many changes as planned for that date, although some changes such as the visual update of Ahri (ASU) will have to wait for the 13.3 update, scheduled for February 8

For his part, the head of League Studio, Andrei van Roon, responded to a comment via Twitter and assured that none of the planned changes will be reversed.

“Cyber ​​attacks against well-known game development companies and studios have increased significantly. Indeed, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the gaming industry has experienced an increase in cases of cyber attacks like no other industry, according to a study conducted by Akamai,” explains Camilo Gutiérrez Amaya, Head of the ESET Latin America Laboratory.

“Criminals use various techniques (phishing, malware, web application attacks, brute force, etc.) to launch their attacks in pursuit of stealing sensitive user information, compromising platform logins, or gaining access to corporate security systems. Directly or indirectly, the attackers’ goal is economic“, he adds.

Last year there was one of the biggest hack, when they managed to leak content from GTA VI, a long-awaited installment by fans, from Rockstar Games.