Gamers ‘attacked as Fortnite firm suffers data breach’

FortniteEpic Games, the company behind the online multiplayer shooter game Fortnite, has reportedly suffered a major ransomware attack, with a hacking gang posting the details of the apparent data theft on its darknet leak site.

While international law enforcement agencies arrested two members of the notorious ransomware gang LockBit last week, and seized the group’s web infrastructure, the game of Whac-A-Mole continues, with a new outfit called The Mogilevich claiming to be behind the incident.

The gang claims to have 189 gigabytes of data, including “email, passwords, full name, payment information, source code and many other data”. The data is currently listed as up for sale.

A Mogilevich spokesperson said: “We have quietly carried out an attack to Epic Games’ servers.”

A hyperlink on the site reads: “If you are an employee of the company or someone who would like to buy the data, click on me.” The link leads to the group’s contact page, where a messaging address can be found.

Mogilevich has not asked for a specific amount of money for the data, and the current deadline for Epic Games to pay – or for someone else to purchase the data outright – is March 4.

As well as Fortnite, Epic also runs its own online shopping site, the Epic Games Store, selling the games of other developers and publishers and has offices all over the world.

In a statement, Epic Games said: “We are investigating but there is currently zero evidence that these claims are legitimate. Mogilievich has not contacted Epic or provided any proof of the veracity of these allegations.

“When we saw these allegations, which were a screenshot of a darkweb webpage in a Tweet from a third party, we began investigating within minutes and reached out to Mogilevich for proof. Mogilevich has not responded. The closest thing we have seen to a response is this Tweet, where they allegedly ask for $15k and ‘proof of funds’ to hand over the purported data.”

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