Video games: after the hacking of Insomniac Games, Ubisoft victim of an attempted cyberattack

2023-12-26 16:52:11

The French video game publisher Ubisoft announced this Tuesday that it had been the victim of an attempted cyber attack. This hacking action comes in a context where other players in the video game industry have experienced massive thefts of data such as the studio Insomniac Games, developer of the game “Wolverine”.

“We are aware of a suspected data security incident and are currently investigating,” said a Ubisoft spokesperson. According to the specialized site “vx-underground”, hackers attempted to exfiltrate nearly 900 GB of data from Ubisoft servers, until security teams blocked the security breach on Thursday.

Last week, the Insomniac Games studio, a subsidiary of the Japanese giant Sony, was the victim of a massive hack of sensitive data in the form of ransomware. Faced with the studio’s refusal to comply, the hackers revealed sensitive information about the company, its partnerships, as well as the studio’s upcoming projects such as the “Wolverine” or “Spider-Man 3” games.

A growing list of victims

“We are both saddened and furious about the recent criminal cyberattack against our studio and the emotional impact it has had on our team of developers,” responded Insomniac Games. “We know that the stolen data includes personal information belonging to our employees, former employees and independent contractors. They also include the first details of the development of Wolverine for the PlayStation 5 (…) This experience has been extremely painful for us,” the studio wrote again, adding that the development of “Wolverine” continues “as planned”.

Insomniac, Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts… The list of publishers victims of targeted cyberattacks has continued to grow in recent years. In September, Rockstar Games, the publisher of the famous video game Grand Theft Auto, admitted that videos from the sixth opus of the franchise, currently in development, had been pirated and posted online by hackers, revealing, even before the The official announcement, the appearance of a female character that players could embody.

The most emblematic case remains that of CD Projekt RED. The Polish group published in early 2021 a copy of the ransom demand from pirates claiming to have stolen the “source codes” (the computer architecture of a program) of major productions like “Cyberpunk 2077” and “The Witcher 3” as well as internal documents.