The hacker who carried out the recent hacking attack against Apex Legends during a significant esports competition claimed to have done so just for fun. The hacker, Destroyer2009, said in an interview that the attack, which caused the Apex Legends Global Series Regional Finals to be postponed, was not the result of malevolent intent. In an interview with TechCrunch, Destroyer2009 said that they deliberately attacked ALGS to amuse themselves and to compel the game’s creator, Respawn Entertainment, to strengthen security measures. The hacker stated,
“Not many people would have used an exploit like that in an absolutely innocent way for players. Just imagine if it wasn’t a joke and we didn’t put any memes in the cheat, I’m pretty sure you can ruin someone’s career if they had a cheat pop up on a tournament.”
Two esports athletes, Phillip ImperialHal Dosen, and Noyan Genburten Ozkose, were impacted by this hacking event. This hack occurred during the North American finals. Dosen obtained an aimbot hack, which gives guns 100% accuracy, while Ozkose was unexpectedly granted a wallhack cheat that allowed him to view opponents through walls.
The gamers exited the game in the middle of a match to escape being banned or facing consequences for cheating, telling their teammates right away that they had somehow obtained hacks.
In addition to announcing that they have deployed the first of a layered series of updates to protect the Apex Legends player community and create a secure experience for everyone, Respawn said in a statement on March 19 that the tournament has been postponed. After all, is it okay to play Apex Legends? It is. Although it appears that the flaw has been fixed, the hacker’s efforts have caused a big tournament to be delayed and have disrupted the normal flow of a competitive esports event.
Players have been worried about the problem even though Respawn has made improvements. It is easy to imagine that if professional players on a global scale are being hacked, it could mean that other players will experience similar problems or, worse, that their PCs will be compromised as well. Destroyer2009, however, claimed to TechCrunch that the vulnerability had “nothing to do with the server” or anything external to Apex and that they were not required to breach the two streams’ PCs.
According to Destroyer2009, R4ndom, another hacker, assisted them in carrying out this hack. It’s interesting to note that EA and Respawn don’t pay anyone to discover and report vulnerabilities, which may be the reason the hackers decided not to disclose the precise vulnerability they employed. They said;
“I really don’t want to go into the details until everything is fully patched and everything goes back to normal.”
Concerns were also raised concerning the anti-cheat program developed by Epic Games and whether or not it had any flaws that would let hackers access a user’s computer system. Epic Games, however, has released a statement refuting the existence of any such loophole in its anti-cheat system.