Gaming Giant EA Confirms A Recent Data Breach

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Claimed in various posts on underground hacking forums, hackers have broken into the system of Electronic Arts, the developer of FIFA, The Sims, Mass Effect and more. They have stolen an abundance of internal data from the company.

The forums show that the software development tools for FIFA 21 and server code for player matchmaking in FIFA 22 were breached. The hackers also said they have obtained relevant information of the Frostbite engine, which directly powers numerous games including Battlefield. And with proprietary EA frameworks and software development kits (SDKs), the total stolen codes account for 780 GB of data, advertised by hackers of its “full capability of exploiting on all EA services.”

An EA spokesperson told Vice in a statement, “we are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen.”

Brett Callow, the cybersecurity expert and a threat analyst at Emsisof, has stressed the potential repercussions of losing source code, stating that, “Source code could, theoretically, be copied by other developers or used to create hacks for games.”

Unlike the data breach targetting Cyberpunk 2077, this incident is not a ransomware attack, as reported by an EA spokesperson to Vice. Instead of blatantly demanding money from EA, the hackers only promote the stolen data’s extensive access on the underground forums, plotting to profit from other ill-intentioned individuals.

As guaranteed by the EA spokesperson, no personal data is leaked in this attack.

“No player data was accessed, and we have no reason to believe there is any risk to player privacy. Following the incident, we’ve already made security improvements and do not expect an impact on our games or our business. We are actively working with law enforcement officials and other experts as part of this ongoing criminal investigation,” the EA spokesperson said.

Currently, the EA team is still in the process of investigation. No legal action has been taken.