ALGS regional finals suspended due to hacking

@hayhor  Doesn't excuse the fact that he had knocked down players from another team. If he was "trying to make EA see", there was other ways to make it known, such as leaving the match and reporting it directly to the ALGS team.

Just saying, using the cheats, even to "make it be aware", is still cheating.

Also, if EA banned him to better look into things, why wasn't his account banned the moment it became known he had them? As in, the moment he told his team he had cheats, why wasn't it dealt with then? Why was he allowed to que into ranked almost an hour later before he was hit with a ban?

Again, pointing this out: https://twitter.com/PlayApexEsports/status/1769527345176621110

If the "competitive integrity" was "compromised" in match 3, why was match 4 allowed to play out? It was clear that Gen got hacked, and it should of prompted EA to investigate EVERY player who was playing in the finals to see if it was a problem for more than just Gen. They would of most likely found out Hal was compromised and would of been less embarrassed as a result.

Chill, Hal played yesterday and streamed worldwide from his smurf account (level 30 predator). It didn't affect him anyhow. Maybe he just don't have those 4000 packs from Destroyer2009 on this smurf account.

IMO, the very fact that EA/ Respawn did not and has not pulled the game pending an investigation for OUR BEST INTERESTS, should tell you everything you need to know. 

EA - "We care about your money."  - "We do not care about the safety of yous, your accounts, private information and so on, sorry... not sorry." 

"Now buy recolored skins and show support." 

@ComicBookGuy2727 

Really?: 

"EA - "We care about your money."  - "We do not care about the safety of yous, your accounts, private information and so on, sorry... not sorry." 

"Now buy recolored skins and show support." "

I am quoting you here however I seriously doubt that you are quoting EA/Respawn. 

Accusing them of not caring is disingenuous and in fact does not help the matter.

FYI: 

This episode has unleashed a horde of cheaters that is scary because they have understood that it is not easy to be banned from this game and it is clear that it will be the death of apex

Of course that was not me quoting rEAspawn... merely my interpretation of events in comical banter. Much like the many on this forum produced in the past for laughs. 

And thank you for attaching EA's response about ending a tournament due to a compromised game and accounts. That was indeed very good and responsible of them.

I'm curious, has there been any other updates, or statements made to the public by EA other the above attachment? Or more specific - has there been any guarantee by either Respawn or EA that playing Apex at the moment or opening the app is safe? Is our personal information safe through the Apex app, our accounts? 

@ComicBookGuy2727 

Thanks for the reply.

From what I have seen on the web there was an official mention that EASY anti cheat does not seem to have an RCE vulnerability. 

Anything else I do not know, however I feel safe playing the game and or other EA titles for various reasons and thoughts of my own.

One of which is that my PC is only used for gaming and nothing else. I have other hardware for the other things I do. 

I am not a high profile player, content creator etc.  they seem to be the target. 

We all should however be aware of our own cybersecurity practices, since their are so many ways a user can enable a bad actor by practicing unsafe things on the net etc.

With that in mind I think (I do not know for sure) Hal unwittingly enabled a bad actor by downloading something sus and compromised his gear.  

Here is a link and from within that link there are others that lead back to November, December, January issues of the Newsletter as well as Cybersecurity Awareness Month back in October.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/EA-Services-General-Questions/Answers-HQ-Online-Security-Newsletter-February/m-p/13526090/thread-id/451225 

There is lots of good info in these newsletters and some fun Ciphers to crack if you are up to it. 

Thanks for the reply... So this is more of a PC issue? I understand that even Console players need to be diligent with verification authentics and such, but this particular ALGS hacking was more of a PC issue? 

I play on Console, and don't use PC for gaming. So I am  hoping the risk isn't as great. 

If in deed it was a 15 year kid... that is pretty sad. Can you imagine what a skilled adult could do with a tech background! Regardless of all thee above... without a doubt, not enough is being done to safe guard the game from hackers or the player base from hackers. And that's by a multi million dollar company. 

We all know there is more they can do, insert, change to minimize hackers (no one will ever remove them altogether), We have heard many suggestions on this forum alone as well as good feedback from game developers speaking the same. 

IMO, EA is just too cheap to spend the money required to keep the game safe, us safe and do more to eliminate more hackers. I agree with Midnight, that I personally feel it was a slap in the face to the player base how little they communicated about this issue. It is unprofessional and terrible business practices. It makes them long worse than they already do, have. 

I appreciate Asmodeus's reply and info, but even your reply shows that you yourself haven't seen any solid responses from EA regarding the players concerns, direct comms or public statements to address concerns, make statements, clarify and so on.  

I don't play on PC, however if I did, I would not open the app or play the game until EA made an official statement. Lets see how long it takes to get one.... if ever. 

@Midnight9746 

@ComicBookGuy2727 

If you can trust the news article, I saw this last night.

Apparently Tech Crunch had some sort of interview with Destroyer2009. 

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/20/apex-legends-hacker-said-he-hacked-tournament-games-for-fun/ 

@Asmodeus566To be honest, when I first watched the clips of both Gen and Hal getting hacked, I instantly knew it was "just for fun", and to make EA/Respawn take notice.

If it was a serious hack, they would of made both players, (and maybe even a few others), have full uncontrollable cheats to where without a shadow of a doubt everyone would think that the pros were the ones who had cheats all along.

Without the chat message saying that the game was getting hacked on Gen's screen, his whole career would ended as everyone saw the cheat GUI popped up on his screen and they would be arguing how he tried to play it off as getting hacked. Even PirateSoftware had said that the chat is "what saved him". Meanwhile for Hal, seeing him suddenly hit two players at the same time would of ended his career too. You wouldn't even need to pull up a cheat GUI to make people think Hal was cheating, especially if Gen was already found out to be guilty of cheating.

Since we already concluded that Gen got hacked, we believed Hal was getting hacked when it happened to him. We assumed it was the same person who hacked Gen, rather than "two pro players using cheats this whole time".

I think Destroyer's bot army was their first attempt at a wake-up call. You can kinda tell that they weren't trying to "ruin" the pro player's matches, but rather stir up trouble that would then catch the eyes of EA/Respawn. When EA/Respawn didn't seem to really care, Destroyer then gave the pros a bunch of Apex Packs. We've all noticed that if the game is bugged, it doesn't get fixed right away, but if the store is bugged, it gets fixed right away. EA is also known as the "money hungry company" and the collection recolor events are very frequent, so I believe the packs was Destroyer's way of "hitting EA in the wallet". However, from what I've heard, EA/Respawn has yet to say anything about the packs, let alone remove them from the pros who were given them.

After messing with pros in matches, and giving away free packs, I believe that Destroyer figured they must "go big, or go home" in their last attempt to get EA/Respawn to take notice. So, what did they do? They caused the biggest Apex event to get postponed.

Hopefully EA/Respawn takes notice and proper action this time. Its insane to think that the game is still this hackable, especially after the whole "Save Titanfall" issue a few years ago.

In short, I think Destroyer's intent here was to force EA/Respawn's hand to fix issues with the game and to better deal with the cheaters, while having fun at embarrassing EA/Respawn in the process with the knowledge of how hackable the game is.

Think about it, if Destroyer was a malicious hacker, this would of been way worse. Even PirateSoftware stated somewhere along the lines of, "With a hack this big, why wouldn't you hit everyone?", and "It would of been funny if everyone in the ALGS suddenly started cheating". With the level of control Destroyer had over the servers, he could of done far worse, and instead of hitting the game hard, he caused everyone to panic in an attempt to improve the game, at least that's what I think his intent was.

They also wouldn't give any details on how they hacked the servers because they didn't want anyone else to have that kind of power. In other words, they didn't want someone to take it that one step further that would of completely toasted the game.

Also note that what I think his intentions were, is mainly just a guess based on what we've seen them do. Its very possible that it was intended on being for fun, while making EA/Respawn look like a joke. Destroyer did say they were "jokers, not clowns" afterall, which seems like it was a jab at EA/Respawn as players have called the game a bad joke before, and have even called EA/Respawn a "bunch of clowns".

Eitherway, what Destroyer did, it wasn't the right thing to do, as they should of told EA/Respawn directly that there was this problem. From what I've heard, they didn't as they wouldn't of gotten any reward for helping EA/Respawn. While again, they shouldn't of been able to even pull off this hack if proper measures was taken by EA/Respawn, especially after the "Save Titanfall" hack.

In my opinion, the players that have been hacked were using "some software" that they should not have been using. This is just my modest opinion, but I also think that the people who developed this "some software" outsmarted the players by adding in the "some software" the possibility to remote control it. Anyway, this is definitely what I would do, if I would ever consider (which, obviously, I am not) to develop something like such a "some software".

Of course, what happened is very sad and disappointing, especially the fact that the quality of the product developed by Respawn and distributed by EA is doubted. This is why, I would also like to add that I am running the game right now, that it is working well, and that there is no sign of any hacking going on. In fact, I am actually pretty confident that there is no such a risk at all.

@ComicBookGuy2727 

Yeah the Tech Crunch article was interesting.

Did you read the Cybersecurity Newsletters as well? There is a lot of good info and some cool games, just mind the spoilers unless you need help completing the challenges.