Apex Legends Tournament Gets Hacked This Weekend

On Sunday, Apex Legends gaming community was left in a frenzy. The organizers of a $5 million tournament had to postpone the event indefinitely after being attacked by a hacker known as Destroyer2009. The game played by thousands of players daily was manipulated by hackers who inserted cheat codes into two players’ live streams. Taking full credit for the incident, the hacker Destroyer2009 claimed he did it “just for fun” with the purpose of forcing the game developers to fix the vulnerability.

During midgame in the tournament, the game’s chatbot displayed messages on the live stream of two players that appeared to come from hackers. This led to countless reactions during the incident and even some players suggesting that the game is not safe, and their information might be at risk. While the hacker did not disclose how he bypassed the system and exploited the issue; but he did not hack the two players’ computers directly. Additionally, he pointed out that not everyone exploits vulnerabilities in such an innocent manner, and that he never had malicious intentions since the hacks never went outside the game.

The ripples of this incident led Respawn, the studio that developed the game, to deploy the first of a layered series of updates to protect the gaming community. They took this to Twitter, nothing mentioning the incident or what the updates are, but reassuring everyone to create a secure experience for everyone. A Apex Legends security team member also tweeted that he and his team were working to address the issue.

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Furthermore, Easy-Anti Cheat, the developers of the anti-cheat engine used in the game, shared their statement on Monday claiming that they are confident that there was not RAC vulnerability within EAC being exploited. However, there is no public evidence in that direction.