League of Legends source code stolen, being held ransom

While it seems commonplace to hear about hackers attacking financial institutions and other locations with huge troves of customer information, the video game industry is no stranger to the issues of information security. Case in point: League of Legends publisher Riot Games announced today that it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack. Hackers are threatening to release the source code for League of Legends, one of the most popular free-to-play games in the world, if their demands are not met.

According to posts on Riot’s official Twitter account (spotted by The Record), the attack occurred last week, using undisclosed social engineering techniques. Social engineering uses conventional deception instead of technical hacking, such as fooling an employee into giving up their access credentials with a fake email header. According to Riot, thieves were able to access the company’s infrastructure to steal game source code for League of Legends and the new mobile strategy game Teamfight Tactics, as well as anti-cheat tools.

While Riot says that no customer data was accessed, the stolen information could leave the games vulnerable to new cheats and exploits. That’s on top of the more straightforward possibility of the source code getting “loose” and less scrupulous developers simply copying Riot’s games. Even so, Riot said it will refuse to pay the hackers.

The attack caused a temporary pause in updates to the affected games, and may result in a slower rollout of patches in the future. It won’t help here, but while you’re waiting for those patches, take the time to perform these 5 easy tasks that supercharge your security. Companies are being breached left and right these days.