Victim of a cyberattack, Riot Games refused to pay the ransom demanded by the hackers. The stolen data is now auctioned off on the darknet.
Yesterday, Tuesday January 24, the Riot Games teams announced that they had received a ransom email for the return of stolen data, in which we find in particular the code source of the famous game League of Legends. Listed price: $10 million. The case is serious for the American publisher. Car League of Legends is the centerpiece of its catalog. Between 10 and 11 million players connect to the game’s servers every day. Despite this, the Riot Games teams have decided not to give in to hacker blackmail and have ended the negotiations.
Today, we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we wont pay.
While this attack disrupted our build environment and could cause issues in the future, most importantly we remain confident that no player data or player personal information was compromised.
2/7
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 24, 2023
Cybercriminals then turned to another solution to make their operation profitable. Five hours after Riot Games refused, a certain ArkaT auctioned off the League of Legends source code on a darknet cybercriminal forum. Bidding starts at one million US dollars.
But why want a source code?
For the buyer, this source code could have several advantages… monetizable. In particular, it could allow him to circumvent the anti-cheating measures put in place by Riot and monetize his knowledge to LOL players, or even to e-sport teams. LOL’s professional circuit is particularly developed. For example, the winning team of the last major tournament on LOL was able to leave with the sum of $486,500. Enough to encourage an unscrupulous team to invest in virtual doping…