Hacker group admits Epic Games breach was scam to catch other criminals
Hacker group Mogilevich has claimed its alleged Epic Games breach was a hoax, with the group trying to scam other criminals.
Last week, the self-titled ransomware group Magilevich claimed it had hacked Epic Games and had made off with close to 200GB of data including email addresses, passwords, payment information and source codes, with the data for sale.
The Fortnite developer was quick to respond, telling VGC that is was investigating the claims but there was “zero evidence” the Moglievich’s claims were “legitimate”.
“Mogilevich has not contacted Epic or provided any proof of the veracity of these allegations. When we saw these allegations, which were a screenshot of a darkweb webpage in a Tweet from a third party, we began investigating within minutes and reached out to Mogilevich for proof. Mogilevich has not responded.”
Ransomware group "Mogilevich" are claiming they obtained nearly 200GB worth of data from Epic Games' servers.
UPDATE: The claim is most likely fake, because they failed to provide proof when @/LawrenceAbrams asked for it, as pointed out here: https://t.co/0nrdslKg85
— HYPEX (@HYPEX) February 28, 2024
Now, one week later, Magilevich has revealed the whole thing was a bluff. A link to the alleged stolen data actually took people to a statement from the group’s spokesperson, going by the name Pongo.
“Unfortunately this link led you to an important announcement of our business instead of evidence of a breached database,” they wrote [via Cyberdaily]. “You may be wondering why all this, and now I’m going to explain everything you need. In reality, we are not a ransomware-as-a-service, but professional fraudsters.”
“We took advantage of big names to gain visibility as quickly as possible,” they admitted, with the end result seeing Maglievich selling fake ransomware software to would-be hackers, with eight groups allegedly falling victim to the scam.
“Now the real question is? Why confess all this when we could just run away? This was done to illustrate the process of our scam,” Pongo said. “We don’t think of ourselves as hackers but rather as criminal geniuses, if you can call us that.”
In 2022, over 90 videos and screenshots from Grand Theft Auto 6 surfaced online ahead of the game’s public reveal. An 18-year old was arrested for the hack, which was carried out using an Amazon Firestick, a hotel TV and a mobile phone, who was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.
In other news Jonathan Bailey, star of Bridgerton, Broadchurch and the upcoming Wicked movie, has compared Final Fantasy 14 to the works of Shakespeare and spoken about his experience voicing “playful companion” G’raha Tia.
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Ali Shutler
NME
