Unknown hackers stole information from the gaming giant Activision.
On Sunday researchers from the security group and malware study vx-underground released images of the data that was allegedly stolen from Activision which includes the calendar of content that is scheduled to be made available for the well-known First-person shooting game Call of Duty.
On Monday, the gaming blog Insider Gaming said it confirmed the existence of a data breach after it obtained “the totality” of the stolen information, which was not released by vx-underground.
According to the website the site, hackers stole information about employees like “full names, email addresses telephone numbers, salary locations of work addresses, names, and much more.”
TechCrunch hasn’t been able to verify the validity of the data published or the specifics of the data breach.
Activision spokesperson Joseph Christinat sent the following statement: “The security of our data is of paramount importance and we have robust security measures in place to protect it from unauthorized access. On the 4th of December 2022, 2022, our data security team swiftly dealt with an SMS-based phishing attack and promptly remediated the issue. After an extensive review, we found that there was no personal information of employees or game codes, nor player information was compromised.”
A tweet from the company vx-underground posted that Activision was attacked on December 4 following hackers “successfully compromised a privileged user via the Network.”
“Also important to note that the threat Actor(s) attempted to phish employees. Others employees were not harmed by the scam. It appears that they didn’t signal the security breach to security experts at the Activision Information Security Team,” vx-underground wrote.
Activision is the latest victim of a series of hacks targeting video game firms.
The month of January saw Riot Games disclosed a security breach that allowed hackers to access Riot Games’ “development system,” allowing them to take the source code for the most popular game League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics as well as the source code of the company’s anti-cheat system that was in place for a long time.
In September, hackers released footage that was not released from the forthcoming and highly sought-after Grand Theft Auto VI. In the meantime, game creator Rockstar Games admitted that hackers were able to gain access to “confidential information” from our systems, which included early footage of the development process for the next Grand Theft Auto.”
Through 2022 the hacking group called 0ktapus (or Scattered Spider) has targeted at least 130 businesses according to cybersecurity company Group-IB. The group gained a lot of attention by hacking cloud-based communications firm Twilio which provides various other services, including sending text messages that are automated to users. Among the 130 companies targeted were several game developers such as Riot Games and Epic Games.
