Recently, news surfaced online that thousands of ‘pay-to-cheat’ players had their information stolen and their Call of Duty accounts compromised. It was revealed that over a network of three cheat providers, over 700,000 accounts were impacted by an ‘unidentified threat actor’. More than 3.6 million Battlenet accounts were hit, with cheaters having their payment and personal information stolen and circulated online.
When the news was broken online, it was also mentioned that users had succumbed to a crypto-wipe attack. Whoever was breaching their accounts online also accessed their crypto wallets, draining their funds in seconds. It was said that this attack specifically targeted users who cheat in video games. It has been branded a vigilante attack by some, but hte long and short of it is that hundreds of thousands of users have been impacted, regardless of how they utilised these ‘cheating sites’.
Bittersweet Situation
This situation is so severe that Activision Blizzard has reportedly teamed up with cheat providers to rectify what has happened. Activision’s legal team recently caused the shutdown of yet another cheat service, but now the gaming titan is working hand-in-hand with these platforms to rescue impacted users. It was referenced by vx-underground, the channel that confirmed the breach, that more than half a million Activision accounts were compromised, which explains the company’s involvement in the scenario.
In a statement published online by vx-underground, it was said:
‘When Elite PVPers (a cheat provider) was approached by PhantomOverlay administrative staff about the compromised accounts, Elite PVPers confirmed they have identified 40,000+ valid user accounts compromised. These are seemingly freshly stolen credentials and are not present from previous publicly available credential dumps.
However, due to the size of the data we have not been able to thoroughly review the data for duplicates. Additionally, impacted users have begun reporting being victims of crypto-draining – their Electrum BTC wallets have been drained. We do not have any information on the amount of money stolen.’
It was also mentioned that not all of the users impacted were cheaters. It was claimed that many thousands of these users were using the services to improve latency, use VPN technology, and facilitate the use of third-party controller devices.
On Twitter, one user wrote that it’s ‘hard to feel sorry for cheaters’, and that’s the sentiment that’s being echoed across social media. In recent years, cheaters have brought some multiplayer-based gaming platforms to their knees, especially Call of Duty. It could be a wake-up call for cheaters – especially prospective ones – and a clear message that you’re never safe when you make use of these malicious methods to alter your game.
It’s a lot of risk for almost no reward.
For more Call of Duty news, Esports.net
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