A hacking and cheating scandal rocked the video game industry on Sunday.
During a competitive esports tournament of Apex Legends, a popular free-to-play shooter game played by hundreds of thousands of players daily, hackers disrupted the games of two well-known streamers by injecting cheats into their gameplay.
One of the affected players exclaimed, “Wait, what the heck? I’m getting hacked, I’m getting hacked, bro!” during a live stream of the match.
The incidents led the organizers of the Apex Legends Global Series tournament, with a $5 million prize pool, to indefinitely postpone the event due to compromised competitive integrity.
As the hacks unfolded, messages from the hackers appeared on the game’s chatbot screen, claiming credit for the breaches.
In an interview with TechCrunch, the hacker known as Destroyer2009 admitted to the hacks, stating that he did it “just for fun” to highlight vulnerabilities that needed fixing in Apex Legends.
The hacks stirred up the Apex Legends community, with many streamers and players expressing concerns about the game’s safety and potential risks of hacking.
Destroyer2009 refused to disclose the specifics of the hack or the vulnerabilities exploited, mentioning that the breach was contained within the game and didn’t extend to the players’ computers.
He justified his actions, saying he didn’t report the vulnerability to the game developers due to the lack of a bug bounty program that rewards hackers for responsibly reporting security flaws.
Respawn, the developer of Apex Legends, subsequently released updates to safeguard the player community from similar incidents.
Despite the controversy, Destroyer2009 downplayed concerns about the vulnerability, confident that it would be patched before others could exploit it.
Overall, the incident shed light on the vulnerability of online gaming platforms to hacking attacks, prompting increased vigilance in the community.
