The event with a prize pool of $5 million had to be suspended due to the actions of intruders.
On Sunday, the video game world was rocked by a hacking and cheating scandal right during the multi-million dollar reward tournament for Apex Legends, a popular free online shooter that draws hundreds of thousands of players online every day.
Hackers interfered with the game of two well-known streamers, and somehow connected cheats to their game session. The "TSM HALAL HOOK" program flashed right on the stream for a moment, and then players were able to see their opponents through the walls, which was immediately noticed by the viewers of the stream. This type of game hacking is called "wallhack", although the connected program had much more extensive functionality, including "aimbot" or auto-targeting.
Screenshot of the program interface that flashed right on the stream
At the same time, the game chatbot started displaying a message coming from hackers: "Global Apex Hacking Series, from Destroyer2009 and R4andom". Obviously, Destroyer2009 and R4andom are the aliases of the hackers responsible for this hack.
The incident forced the organizers of the Apex Legends Global Series tournament with a prize pool of $ 5 million to suspend the event and postpone it indefinitely, because even for a moment, hacked players gained an advantage over other participants in the tournament.
Later, the Destroyer2009 hacker gave an exclusive interview to TechCrunch, where he confessed to his actions and stated that his motivation was "simple fun" and a desire to force developers to fix the vulnerability he identified.
The hacker stressed that the methods he used did not go beyond the Apex gameplay: that is, he did not hack into the computers of affected players directly in order to launch the program that caused the scandal. And in general, according to him, he did not want to harm the players computers. However, the hacker refused to disclose the details of the vulnerabilities he used.
Destroyer2009 also indicated that it did not report the vulnerability to the developers of Apex Legends from Respawn and the publisher Electronic Arts, because they do not offer a reward program for detecting errors. The hacker defended his actions, claiming that his interference was not malicious, despite the risk to the career of players in tournaments.
In response to the incident, Respawn Studio, the developer of Apex Legends, announced the release of a whole series of updates to the game client aimed at protecting the gaming community, without specifying the details of these updates.
The developers of the Easy Anti-Cheat system used in Apex Legends have previously stated that they are confident that there are no RCE vulnerabilities in their product that could be used by hackers to directly access players computers through the game.
Despite the excitement caused by hacking in the community, Destroyer2009 convinces that players should not worry, because it is unlikely that someone will be able to use the vulnerability they found before it is fixed, and the career of players is not in danger, largely because hackers sent a disclaimer message to the in-game chat, where they warned about hacking. Who knows what would have happened to these players if they hadn't been able to prove their innocence.
On Sunday, the video game world was rocked by a hacking and cheating scandal right during the multi-million dollar reward tournament for Apex Legends, a popular free online shooter that draws hundreds of thousands of players online every day.
Hackers interfered with the game of two well-known streamers, and somehow connected cheats to their game session. The "TSM HALAL HOOK" program flashed right on the stream for a moment, and then players were able to see their opponents through the walls, which was immediately noticed by the viewers of the stream. This type of game hacking is called "wallhack", although the connected program had much more extensive functionality, including "aimbot" or auto-targeting.
Screenshot of the program interface that flashed right on the stream
At the same time, the game chatbot started displaying a message coming from hackers: "Global Apex Hacking Series, from Destroyer2009 and R4andom". Obviously, Destroyer2009 and R4andom are the aliases of the hackers responsible for this hack.
The incident forced the organizers of the Apex Legends Global Series tournament with a prize pool of $ 5 million to suspend the event and postpone it indefinitely, because even for a moment, hacked players gained an advantage over other participants in the tournament.
Later, the Destroyer2009 hacker gave an exclusive interview to TechCrunch, where he confessed to his actions and stated that his motivation was "simple fun" and a desire to force developers to fix the vulnerability he identified.
The hacker stressed that the methods he used did not go beyond the Apex gameplay: that is, he did not hack into the computers of affected players directly in order to launch the program that caused the scandal. And in general, according to him, he did not want to harm the players computers. However, the hacker refused to disclose the details of the vulnerabilities he used.
Destroyer2009 also indicated that it did not report the vulnerability to the developers of Apex Legends from Respawn and the publisher Electronic Arts, because they do not offer a reward program for detecting errors. The hacker defended his actions, claiming that his interference was not malicious, despite the risk to the career of players in tournaments.
In response to the incident, Respawn Studio, the developer of Apex Legends, announced the release of a whole series of updates to the game client aimed at protecting the gaming community, without specifying the details of these updates.
The developers of the Easy Anti-Cheat system used in Apex Legends have previously stated that they are confident that there are no RCE vulnerabilities in their product that could be used by hackers to directly access players computers through the game.
Despite the excitement caused by hacking in the community, Destroyer2009 convinces that players should not worry, because it is unlikely that someone will be able to use the vulnerability they found before it is fixed, and the career of players is not in danger, largely because hackers sent a disclaimer message to the in-game chat, where they warned about hacking. Who knows what would have happened to these players if they hadn't been able to prove their innocence.
