Apex Legends streamers surprised to find aimbot and other hacks added to their PCs in the middle of major competition

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bilateralrope
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Apex Legends streamers surprised to find aimbot and other hacks added to their PCs in the middle of major competition

Post by bilateralrope »

PC Gamer
By Jody Macgregor published yesterday
The hack may have been spread through Apex's anti-cheat software.


The Apex Legends Global Series is currently in regional finals mode, but the North America finals have been delayed after two players were hacked mid-match. First, Noyan "Genburten" Ozkose of DarkZero suddenly found himself able to see other players through walls, then Phillip "ImperialHal" Dosen of TSM was given an aimbot.

Genburten's hack happened part of the way through the day's third match. A Twitch clip of the moment shows the words "Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom" repeating over chat as he realizes he's been given a cheat and takes his hands off the controls. "I can see everyone!" he says, before leaving the match.

ImperialHal was hacked in the game immediately after that. "I have aimbot right now!" he shouts in a clip of the moment, before declaring "I can't shoot." Though he continued attempting to play out the round, the match was later abandoned.

The volunteers at the Anti-Cheat Police Department have since issued a PSA announcing, "There is currently an RCE exploit being abused in [Apex Legends]" and that it could be delivered via from the game itself, or its anti-cheat protection. "I would advise against playing any games protected by EAC or any EA titles", they went on to say.

As for players of the tournament, they strongly recommended taking protective measures. "It is advisable that you change your Discord passwords and ensure that your emails are secure. also enable MFA for all your accounts if you have not done it yet", they said, "perform a clean OS reinstall as soon as possible. Do not take any chances with your personal information, your PC may have been exposed to a rootkit or other malicious software that could cause further damage."

The rest of the series has now been postponed, "Due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised," as the official Twitter account announced. They finished by saying, "We will share more information soon."
A competition disrupted because someone forced competitors to install hacks min-competition. Possibly via the anti-cheat software.

This sounds very worrying. I wonder if there is any limit to what the attackers could install on victims machines.
fnord
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Re: Apex Legends streamers surprised to find aimbot and other hacks added to their PCs in the middle of major competitio

Post by fnord »

The big one here is "remote code execution" - the ability for a remote (ie, not on the box) attacker to run _whatever the hell code they want_ that the box can run.

Short answer - no real limit - if the machine can run it, the attackers can load/run it.
A mad person thinks there's a gateway to hell in his basement. A mad genius builds one and turns it on. - CaptainChewbacca
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