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It now appears that the Riot Games data breach is — as seems usual these days — a lot worse than initially reported. The developer revealed overnight that the source code for both League of Legends and TeamFight Tactics was breached, and that the hackers have now demanded a ransom.
“Over the weekend, our analysis confirmed source code for League, TFT, and a legacy anti-cheat platform were exfiltrated by the attackers,” Riot Games said in a tweet.
“Today, we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we won’t pay.”
Riot also continues to state that no customer data has been compromised. The original hack took place some time before 21 January, when Riot made its initial announcement.
The leak of source code, however, could have serious consequences for both games going forward. With source code, it’s entirely possible whole new families of cheats and exploits could be created for the game. On top of that, Riot has said the compromised code included “a number of experimental features”.
“While we hope some of these game modes and other changes eventually make it out to players, most of this content is in prototype and there’s no guarantee it will ever be released,” Riot games added.
The hack has also impacted the company’s schedule for updating its games. A patch scheduled for 26 January will still be released, but some of the content meant to be included in it will be pushed to a February update, according to an update from the official League of Legends Twitter account.
League of Legends is a highly competitive game, with a global e-sports reach.
Riot says it is working with both law enforcement and “globally recognised external consultants” to investigate both the extent of the breach and who may be behind it.
The company has promised to release a full report on the incident as soon as it is able.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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