Insomniac Games, the Sony-backed development company behind today's high-profile games like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and the recent Spider-Man 2, had been breached, with hackers already leaking sensitive information online after Sony's non-compliance.
Massive Data Leak
For those who do not know, Insomniac Games was hacked by a ransomware group called "Rhysida" just last week. The group said that it stole 1.67 terabytes worth of data and threatened to leak the information if they were not paid $2 million. Sony launched an investigation soon after. However, it seems like the company did not pay up because Rhysida had already leaked the sensitive information online just recently.
Among the data that was leaked are personal staff information, contracts between Marvel and Sony about upcoming games, an early build of Wolverine, and many others. Speaking of Wolverine, the ransomware group had exposed multiple design images of the upcoming video game, which may or may not be used in the final release version.
A spokesperson of Rhysida shared some details about the attack. They said that they already knew who they were attacking before the incident took place. "We knew that developers making games like this would be an easy target," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson went on to say that the group was able to get domain administrator access in less than 30 minutes of hacking the network.
According to the US Department of Justice and Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, the Rhysida ransomware group was able to hack enterprise systems due to their victims' lack of multi-factor authentication.
Community Cries Foul
Video game development companies are composed of very passionate and talented people. No matter what the higher-ups say about the direction of an organization, the developers pour their blood, sweat, and tears just to create games that people will enjoy.
That is why it is not surprising that the gaming industry banded together in support of the people at Insomniac Games, especially those whose sensitive information has been leaked online
Remedy Entertainment, the developer of the highly successful Alan Wake 2, tweeted that the hacking and leaking of personal information is "truly disgraceful and shameful."
Dinga Bakaba, a Game Designer at Arkane Studios, said: "When rumors started circulating I had my first physical symptoms of stress in decades and legit had nightmares every night." He concluded his tweet by saying that the developers at Insomniac Games deserve the community's support right now.
Over on Reddit, some people have cried foul over what Rhysida has done. Redditor @Sascha2022 said that exposing personal data is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone.
Another Redditor said that the leak included multiple in-game development footage of Wolverine, a roadmap of Insomniac's next lineup of games, plus more documents about budgets, licensing agreements, and workforce allocations, among others. "It's truly wild and unfortunate," they concluded.
It is truly unfortunate that a game development company as high-profile as Insomniac got breached. It is interesting to see how things will unfold. Will Sony do something about this? Only time will tell.
What can you say about this incident? Let us know in the comments.
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