Worst (Cyber) Attack to a Game Company?

[Moonface]

So if you haven't heard, Insomniac Games were hacked recently by a ransomware group who threatened to publish everything they had obtained unless a ransom of $2 million was paid. That threat was made a week ago and the ransom went unpaid, and as a result the group have now published more than 1.67TB of internal data belonging to Insomniac, which includes files for the upcoming Wolverine game, Spider-Man 2, two other game projects that are planned for release in 2029 and 2033, as well as the personal data of Insomniac employees which includes passport scans, I-9 forms, Slack channels and more: https://www.cyberdaily.au/culture/9959-s...ernal-data


Obviously this is an incredibly damaging attack against Insomniac, mainly due to the amount of personal data that has been shared. I'm used to most stories about studios being targets for a malicious endeavor to be that game footage and/or details got leaked early, which while bad isn't remotely on par to the personal data leaks Insomniac have been victim of. So I was wondering to myself if this might be the worst attack a game company has suffered from, or if there's other instances that were just as bad or god forbid actually worse than this one?

[Maniakkid25]

A recurring theme for me posting on these types of threads is that an event was so monumentous that it was given its own Wikipedia page. Today is no different. I am, of course, referring to the Sony Network Hack of 2011. So easily we forget that 77 million people had their personal details exposed. Combine that with a delayed response and a CATASTROPHICALLY bad attempt at damage control, and you have a hack so monumentous, that literal GOVERNMENTS got involved.

Also, trying to search for the year this happened gave me a search result of 2023 as recommended, and SONY LITERALLY HAD THIS HAPPEN AGAIN 2 MONTHS AGO, ARE YOU SERIOUS?

[queenzelda]

I'm not. Sony gives two shits about defending against cyber attacks and just let's them happen over and over. Why do they care? Why should they? Sony get tons of cash thrown at them just for the privilege of someone owning a PS5. 

Sony isn't your friend, it certainly doesn't care about the people who work in their company. If they did this shit wouldn't keep happening. And what's sad is the government does nothing. Nobody cares, it's all stuff people just monopolize anyway. In the end it's another front page piece on the news forgotten in time, just like the first, second, third times.

smh

[shadow]

100% what queenzelda posted. 
 
If anything the hacks I feel are going to be worse. Set a pass code: change your password.  It's about to hit the fan... 

[Moonface]

A recurring theme for me posting on these types of threads is that an event was so monumentous that it was given its own Wikipedia page. Today is no different. I am, of course, referring to the Sony Network Hack of 2011. So easily we forget that 77 million people had their personal details exposed. Combine that with a delayed response and a CATASTROPHICALLY bad attempt at damage control, and you have a hack so monumentous, that literal GOVERNMENTS got involved.

Also, trying to search for the year this happened gave me a search result of 2023 as recommended, and SONY LITERALLY HAD THIS HAPPEN AGAIN 2 MONTHS AGO, ARE YOU SERIOUS?

I did recall the 2011 PSN hack when making this thread, but I did forget that it leaked that much personal customer information. I can't remember if I saw that SIE hack at the time it happened or not though. I expect the only way this Insomniac hack would somehow end up more damaging to Sony than the 2011 hack would be if it drastically hurts their deal with Disney for the exclusive rights to Marvel games for the next decade. I doubt Disney is going to take kindly to that information going public, especially if another company uses it as leverage in future negotiations with them.

I'm not. Sony gives two shits about defending against cyber attacks and just let's them happen over and over. Why do they care? Why should they? Sony get tons of cash thrown at them just for the privilege of someone owning a PS5. 

Sony isn't your friend, it certainly doesn't care about the people who work in their company. If they did this shit wouldn't keep happening. And what's sad is the government does nothing. Nobody cares, it's all stuff people just monopolize anyway. In the end it's another front page piece on the news forgotten in time, just like the first, second, third times.

smh

No company is your friend nor family, no matter how much they make the claim or if you even work for them. Despite that, Sony should have been doing better at preventing these attacks long ago and clearly haven't made much effort, since the Insomniac hack apparently took less than 20 minutes to pull off with such little effort that it even surprised the group who hacked them in the first place.
As I said above, Disney having their private business dealings with Sony/Insomniac being made public through this is very likely to piss them off big time and I'd expect them to hold Sony fully accountable for allowing this hack to be so easy to pull off. Unless I'm mistaken, previous attacks on Sony haven't dragged in other companies so as long as Sony doesn't lose customers (which it doesn't to any meaningful amount) they don't really see a change to their business once the dust settles. Having Disney dragged into this one though means Sony as a business will be answering to another business, and we all know Disney doesn't mess about when it comes to managing their own business so if they target Sony for any damage this hack brings their way that'll hurt Sony a lot. If that happens and Sony still doesn't learn though, I genuinely think that any chance of Sony learning is beyond hope at that point.

[calamarik]

There have been other notable incidents, like a few years back when scammers used copycat Fortnite apps to spread malware. It's described here: https://www.salvagedata.com/fortnite-cop...g-malware/. This didn't result in massive data leaks, but it compromised the security of countless players' devices and personal information.

[Moonface]

There have been other notable incidents, like a few years back when scammers used copycat Fortnite apps to spread malware. This didn't result in massive data leaks, but it compromised the security of countless players' devices and personal information.

Huh, I never heard of that. It doesn't surprise me though, given how the mobile game market still feels a lot like the wild west when it comes to misleading and shady practices.