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Electronic Arts Hit by Hackers Who Took Source Code, Tools

The silhouettes of attendees are seen standing in front of a Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) logo displayed on a screen during the company's EA Play event ahead of the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Saturday, June 9, 2018. EA announced that it is introducing a higher-end version of its subscription game-playing service that will include new titles such as Battlefield V and the Madden NFL 19 football game. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) --Electronic Arts Inc., the video-game giant behind the Battlefield, Sims and Madden NFL franchises, said that hackers stole game source code and related internal tools.

By Olga Kharif and Kartikay Mehrotra
Jun 10, 2021, 6:26 PM – Updated on Jun 10, 2021, 9:27 PM
Word Count: 324
The loss wasn’t extensive and isn’t expected to affect games or Electronic Arts’ business, the company said Thursday by email. The company didn’t provide other details of the attack.

“We are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen,” the Redwood City, California-based company said. “No player data was accessed, and we have no reason to believe there is any risk to player privacy.”

Hackers going by the name Kickass on the XSS cybercrime forum claim to have stolen a trove of data from Electronic Arts. They first advertised the stolen data in a locked chatroom on XSS earlier this week, claiming to have the original software-development kit for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox console, along with keys to crack FIFA 21, FIFA 22 and other EA game frameworks.

In all, the hackers are trying to sell about 780 gigabytes of game data, according to the post.

“You have full capability of exploiting on all EA services,” the hackers claim in their post, a screenshot of which was shared with Bloomberg News by a person with access to the secret chatroom.

Electronic Arts has tightened security since the incident and is “actively working with law-enforcement officials and other experts as part of this ongoing criminal investigation,” the company said.

Motherboard previously reported on the incident, which sent shares of Electronic Arts down as much as 2.4% on Thursday before the stock erased most of those losses.

“Breaches are so common at this point it’s probably just a minor black eye for them,” said Doug Clinton, a managing partner at Loup Ventures. “There’s always the chance for there to be more to the story, but odds are this is forgotten in a few weeks. “

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