Cyber criminals have compromised one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, Electronic Arts (EA). Famously known for publishing games such as FIFA, Battlefield and The Sims, it has been confirmed that hackers have stolen and leaked sensitive information linked to their recent attack on EA (Vice). The existence of this leak was first reported on June 10 when a thread was posted in one of the underground hacking forums disclosing the possession of EA data, priced at $28 million. 

In one of the statements, an EA spokesperson has commented, “We are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen,”. It has now also been confirmed by EA, during their interview with Wired, that the attack did not involve any ransomware and therefore it is unlikely that player data has been compromised. 

It appears that the hackers gained access to EA data after purchasing authentication cookies for EA’s internal Slack channel from Genesis, a dark web marketplace. The authentication cookies work by mimicking an already logged in EA employee and gaining access to the Slack channel which therefore allows the hacker to be granted access to EA’s internal network. Around 780GB of source code was downloaded by the hackers and while they hoped to earn a huge sum of money from this attack, they were unable to find any buyers on the underground market as most of the stolen data was source code and lacked in any value to other cyber criminals who were more interested in personal or financial data (The Record). 

Also this year back in February CD Projekt Red, publishers of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, were also victims of a ransomware attack. The hackers claimed to have allegedly stolen source code for games in which the company refused to negotiate with the cyber criminals (Express). 

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