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Epic Games is currently being sued over multiple security vulnerabilities that enabled hackers to access the personal information of Epic Games account holders (via Polygon).
In January, a bug in Fortnite was reported to expose the personal details of millions of player accounts. It allowed a hacker to take over the account of any game player, view sensitive information, purchase V-bucks, and listen to and record players’ in-game and background home conversations.
Check Point Research, a cyber threat intelligence research collective, stated how these attacks were possible. ‘By discovering a vulnerability found in some of Epic Games’ sub-domains, an XSS attack was permissible with the user merely needing to click on a link sent to them by the attacker. Once clicked, with no need even for them to enter any login credentials, their Fortnite username and password could immediately be captured the attacker.’
As a proportion of Fortnite players are young teenagers and children, the implications were chilling. Epic Games acted quickly and patched the security breach, and released an official statement on the vulnerability, but did not identify and notify which accounts were compromised. Therefore, users are unsure if anyone other than Epic has record of their personal data, as no one was specifically informed.
The class-action lawsuit, filed by Franklin D. Azar & Associates, asserts Epic Games’ ‘failure to maintain adequate security measures and notify users of the security breach in a timely manner.’ The lawsuit is already more than 100 members strong, and states that the plaintiffs ‘have an ongoing interest in ensuring that their [sensitive information] is protected from past and future cybersecurity threats.’
Fortnite is one of the most popular games right now, and the security breach is hardly insignificant. It is hoped that the affected individuals have already changed their details on the database, or made a new account to ensure their information was no longer valuable to hackers. Epic Games is yet to comment on the legal action.
Fortnite is out now for PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
