Riot Games says it has received ransom note following hack, but won’t pay up

Riot Games has said it will refuse to pay a ransomware demand to regain some of its source code following a recent cyberattack.

In an update concerning this week’s incident, Riot confirmed it was an extortion attack, noting that the source code for League of Legends (LoL), Teamfight Tactics (TFT), and a legacy anticheat platform, was exfiltrated by the attackers.

It also confirmed receiving a ransom note, but added that it has no intention of paying the ransom demand.

Personal data safe

“Today, we received a ransom email. Needless to say, we won’t pay,” the tweet (opens in new tab) reads, without adding further information on the ransom demand or amount.

Further explaining the current state of things, the popular game development company said the attack “disrupted our build environment” which could cause issues in the future, but added that no player data, or personal information, was compromised as a result of the breach. The crooks might use the stolen source code to create cheats for its games, but that’s pretty much it. 

“Since the attack, we’ve been working to assess its impact on anticheat and to be prepared to deploy fixes as quickly as possible if needed.”

The company also said the source code held a number of experimental features some of which could have made it to the live version of the game. 

“Most of this content is in prototype and there’s no guarantee it will ever be released,” the thread continues.

Riot also said its security teams are working together with “globally recognized external consultants” on further evaluation of the attack, and on system audit. The police have been notified of the attack, and have launched an investigation of their own, the company said.

Earlier this week, Riot Games reported on a data breach impacting some of its products, saying that it might delay releasing game patches for LoL and TFT. All features that were planned to be released will still be released, but at a later date. 

Via: The Record (opens in new tab)