Esports pros competing in the Apex Legends Global Series Pro League tournament were forced to abandon their match today due to a suspected cyberattack.
In the early hours of Monday morning, two professional Apex Legends players competing in two separate matches were forcibly given cheats on their accounts - events that have seen the tournament temporarily shut down.
The community suspects that the attacker responsible for the intrusion exploited an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability in the Apex Legends game.
This was backed up by messages sent from the alleged attacker to the individual behind AntiCheatPD, an X account that gathers information about video game cheats, claiming that the incident was caused by an RCE exploit.
The messages didn't specify the component of the game that was allegedly exploited.
The community has been debating whether it could be in the Apex Legends game client itself or in the game's built-in anti-cheat mechanism.
Another possibility being discussed is that the vulnerability was in Valve's Source engine, a heavily modified version of which powers the game.
The scant communications from Apex Legends, developer Respawn Entertainment, or publisher Electronic Arts, haven't answered anything in terms of technical specifics.
The incident - where competition was disrupted as a result of outside interference - is a rarity in the esports world.
In 2015, professional matches in DOTA 2 and League of Legends were also forcibly abandoned after DDoS attackers knocked players offline, rendering them unable to compete.
This type of attack is more common against game servers themselves, rather than individuals, but it's not unheard of for professional esports players or streamers to get the same treatment.
Given that all major esports matches are freely streamed online, the disruption can be seen in real time.
Also taking into account that bets can be placed on matches with major, legitimate bookmakers, there is entertainment and potentially financial incentives to carry out such attacks.
Reputational harm to a player and/or the game could also be a motivator.
Cheating in esports has largely come from the players themselves, introducing cheat software to their systems to give themselves a competitive advantage.
There have been countless cases over the years that have led to professionals being banned from their respective games for varying lengths o time.
Like former StarCraft world champion Lee Seung-hyun, were banned for life.
Although he didn't use a technical, software, or hardware-based exploit, Lee was found guilty of taking payments to fix matches and subsequently banned from StarCraft esports forever.
Using illegal cheats has long been on the radar of video game professionals and made security shop Trend Micro's top three concerns for pro players back in 2019, alongside ransomware and information stealers.
This Cyber News was published on go.theregister.com. Publication date: Mon, 18 Mar 2024 14:28:04 +0000