Professional Apex Legends players got hacked mid-game: what happened?

Apex Legends is center stage at this time, but for the least desirable reasons. Two professional players of the game developed by Respawn Entertainment were hacked while playing in the finals of the North American tournament. Apex Legends Global Series. This was alarming not only because it happened at a very large scale eSports event, but also because it could affect anyone using the game published by Electronic Arts.

What happened? Noyan Ozkosepseudonym Genburten, and Philippe Dozen, known as ImperialHal, was the victim of a cyber attack while participating in the aforementioned competition. In both cases, the attackers provided the players with traps that were activated remotely.

The interesting thing is that the hacks of the players Apex Legends They were recorded live via Twitch. Gainburten himself published a video showing the moment in which change this allowed him See your opponents through walls. “They hacked me, they hacked me!” – he shouts as the game progresses. “Can you play?” – one of his classmates asks him, to which he replies: “Yes, but he’s cheating!” The player then quits the game, clearly angry about the situation.

While the hack is happening, you can see it in the chat Apex Legends that the supposed authors under the names Destroyer2009 And R4ndom, they attribute it to him. In the case of ImperialHal, the attackers activated aimbot which helps you aim when shooting. “I’m cheating, I’m cheating! I have aimbot!” says Dozen during his broadcast, and his teammates convince him to quit the game. The above tried to continue the game, but eventually quit. In fact, after this situation his account was blocked.

Hacking in the midst of competition forced Apex Legends postpone the North American final, which involved the victims. Through publication on X (Twitter)Tournament officials noted that “the competitive integrity of the series was compromised.” However, they did not talk about this in more detail.

Great concern about hacking Apex Legends

What Genburten and ImperialHal went through is causing great concern among fans Apex Legends, which is played by millions of players around the world. Especially because The break-in occurred in a private lounge during a professional competition.. Fears that such situations will be repeated in public are already generating many comments both on Discord and on social networks.

And what worries users most Apex Legends It is still unclear how such hacks became possible. On X (Twitter), the Police Department’s anti-fraud account. published after the event It was remote code execution or RCE. But it is still unknown whether it was accomplished by exploiting a vulnerability in the game itself or in the anti-cheat system. Easy anti-cheat.

From the same profile They published a chat on Telegram with Destroyer2009, one of the hackers who claimed responsibility for the attack. It confirms that it was a remote code execution against Apex Legends and although he does not provide more detailed information, he assures that exploit This has nothing to do with R5 Reloaded., an unofficial game mod for connecting to private servers. “The R5 devs are going crazy because Hal [por ImperialHal] an unidentified R5 lives in front of 40,000 people,” they explain to the hacker.

Given the presumption that attacks on professional players Apex Legends was committed by Easy Anti-Cheat, an anti-cheat technology owned by Epic Games.

“We have investigated recent reports of a possible remote code execution issue in Easy Anti-Cheat. At this time, we are confident that no RCE vulnerabilities are exploited by Easy Anti-Cheat. We will continue to work closely with our partners on any issues. follow-up support as needed” listed in X (Twitter). Interestingly, this was the first publication of an account on the said social network in almost 5 years, which underscores the seriousness of the matter.

What players should do

In addition to the announcement of the postponement of the finals of the North American tournament Apex Legends, Both Respawn and EA remain silent. Neither research nor publisher have spoken publicly on the matter, at least as of this writing.

As we have already said, the scale of hacking of professional players is very alarming. After all, remote code execution can be applied to much more serious cyberattacks than simply disrupting a video game.

While there is no official information on the cause of the incident, the Anti-Fraud Office has issued a statement. a number of recommendations to all Apex Legends players. Basically, they take all necessary measures to protect your sensitive data online. This ranges from changing passwords for email, Discord accounts and other services, and enabling two-step verification where possible.

They also call for this format your computer’s hard drive and perform a clean installation of the operating system. “Don’t risk your personal information. Your computer may have been exposed to a rootkit or other malware that could cause further damage,” they said.

To this should be added a sentence Do not play Apex Legends or any other EA game or that uses Easy Anti-Cheat. until the root of the problem is clear. Some games that use such anti-cheat software are: Fortnite, Battlefield 2042, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, iRacing And Autumn guysamong the others.