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Motherboard reports that EA has fallen victim to hackers, who have gotten rid of the FIFA 21 source code, the Frostbite engine (behind not only EA’s soccer/football series, but also Battlefield), and other game development tools. Hackers are said to advertise that data is for sale on hacking forums, but will only consider offers from big-name members of the hacking community.
Source code is a big deal in programming, so it’s a big deal when companies lose control of it, and the gaming industry has seen some huge thefts lately: Hackers stole CD Projekt Red source code for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 in February and in February in July of 2020, Nintendo has seen the source code of several SNES and Nintendo 64 games, including Super Mario Kart and the unreleased Zelda game, released into the wild in what has been dubbed the “Nintendo Gigaleak”.
While it’s unlikely that other reputable developers will intentionally use EA code, hackers’ ability to see the inner workings of a game or engine can help them craft cheats or cracks — and may also reveal secret projects, game ideas, or developer comments. Of the companies prefer not to see the light of day. Nor are the breaches terribly significant to the company’s reputation.
In addition to EA’s own code and tools, hackers claim to have Sony’s Microsoft Xbox, SDK, and API keys available for sale as well. Here is a screenshot obtained by BleepingComputer claiming that hackers owned a total of 780GB of stolen data:
Microsoft and Sony gadgets may also be on sale
An EA spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that hackers stole “a limited amount of the game’s source code and related tools,” and said the hackers were unable to access player data. They also said the company has improved security after the hack, and they don’t expect an impact on its games or business. EA has made it clear to us that, unlike a series of recent cybersecurity incidents we’ve seen, this was not a ransomware attack, and they are working with law enforcement to investigate the incident.
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