Fortnite has been one of the most popular video games in the world for a couple of years, although today it faces a crash on iOS and macOS devices due to a legal dispute between Epic Gmes and Apple.
This has affected millions of gamers, although it has represented a profit to hackers, who are selling stolen accounts and some in-game items (skins, virtual money), a business that could generate profits of up to $1.2 million a year. To begin with, hackers gather thousands of accounts committed to publishing on Telegram’s private channels, offering them at auctions that can range from $10,000 to $40,000 per account.
Released in 2017, Fortnite is a “Battle Royal” video game in which 100 players compete to stay as the last one standing on the map. Since its arrival the game has grown exponentially, accumulating around 350 million players from multiple platforms.
A recent report mentions that this is one of the fastest growing trends among the cybercrime community due to its low complexity and high levels of earnings: “Less prominent sellers can earn a minimum of $5,000 a month,” the report published by Night Lion Security says.
A big advantage for hackers is that they only require a cracking toolkit; a popular videogame cracking specialist known as “DonJuji” claims that large cracking groups can try to compromise up to 500 Fortnite accounts per second thanks to their advanced hacking resources.
In this regard, Epic Games is trying to prevent this malicious behavior by focusing on limiting the number of logins related to a specific IP address, although more advanced hacker groups have already anticipated this situation: “Cybercriminals can bypass this restriction using costly proxy rotation services, allowing them to deliver new IP addresses with each login request” , mentions the security report. The value of hacked accounts may vary depending on the items stored.
That’s why users ask Epic Games to establish better security controls, as Fortnite accounts or many other popular video games can become a coveted target for multiple cybercriminal groups.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.