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Category — game hack
Squirrel Engine Bug Could Let Attackers Hack Games and Cloud Services

Squirrel Engine Bug Could Let Attackers Hack Games and Cloud Services

Oct 19, 2021
Researchers have disclosed an out-of-bounds read vulnerability in the Squirrel programming language that can be abused by attackers to break out of the sandbox restrictions and execute arbitrary code within a SquirrelVM, thus giving a malicious actor complete access to the underlying machine.  Tracked as CVE-2021-41556 , the issue occurs when a game library referred to as Squirrel Engine is used to execute untrusted code and affects stable release branches 3.x and 2.x of Squirrel. The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed on August 10, 2021. Squirrel is an open-source, object-oriented programming language that's used for scripting video games and as well as in IoT devices and distributed transaction processing platforms such as Enduro/X. "In a real-world scenario, an attacker could embed a malicious Squirrel script into a community map and distribute it via the trusted Steam Workshop," researchers Simon Scannell and Niklas Breitfeld said in a report shared with ...
Exclusive — Hacker Steals Over 218 Million Zynga 'Words with Friends' Gamers Data

Exclusive — Hacker Steals Over 218 Million Zynga 'Words with Friends' Gamers Data

Sep 29, 2019
A Pakistani hacker who previously made headlines earlier this year for selling almost a billion user records stolen from nearly 45 popular online services has now claimed to have hacked the popular mobile social game company Zynga Inc . With a current market capitalization of over $5 billion, Zynga is one of the world's most successful social game developers with a collection of hit online games—including FarmVille, Words With Friends, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, and Café World—with over a billion players worldwide. Going by the online alias Gnosticplayers, the serial hacker told The Hacker News that this time, he managed to breach " Words With Friends ," a popular Zynga-developed word puzzle game, and unauthorisedly access a massive database of more than 218 million users. According to the hacker, the data breach affected all Android and iOS game players who installed and signed up for the 'Words With Friends' game on and before 2nd September this year. ...
The Future of Serverless Security in 2025: From Logs to Runtime Protection

The Future of Serverless Security in 2025: From Logs to Runtime Protection

Nov 28, 2024Cloud Security / Threat Detection
Serverless environments, leveraging services such as AWS Lambda, offer incredible benefits in terms of scalability, efficiency, and reduced operational overhead. However, securing these environments is extremely challenging. The core of current serverless security practices often revolves around two key components: log monitoring and static analysis of code or system configuration. But here is the issue with that: 1. Logs Only Tell Part of the Story Logs can track external-facing activities, but they don't provide visibility into the internal execution of functions. For example, if an attacker injects malicious code into a serverless function that doesn't interact with external resources (e.g., external APIs or databases), traditional log-based tools will not detect this intrusion. The attacker may execute unauthorized processes, manipulate files, or escalate privileges—all without triggering log events. 2. Static Misconfiguration Detection is Incomplete Static tools that check ...
Account Takeover Vulnerability Found in Popular EA Games Origin Platform

Account Takeover Vulnerability Found in Popular EA Games Origin Platform

Jun 26, 2019
A popular gaming platform used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide has been found vulnerable to multiple security flaws that could have allowed remote hackers to takeover players' accounts and steal sensitive data. The vulnerabilities in question reside in the "Origin" digital distribution platform developed by Electronic Arts (EA)—the world's second-largest gaming company with over 300 million users—that allows users to purchase and play some of the most popular video games including Battlefield, Apex Legends, Madden NFL, and FIFA. The Origin platform also manages users EA Games account authentication and allows them to find friends, join games, and manage their profiles. Discovered by researchers at Check Point and CyberInt, the vulnerabilities when chained together could have allowed attackers to hijack gamer's EA account just by convincing them into opening an official webpage from the EA Games website. To perform this attack, as shown in th...
cyber security

Creating, Managing and Securing Non-Human Identities

websitePermisoCybersecurity / Identity Security
A new class of identities has emerged alongside traditional human users: non-human identities (NHIs). Permiso Security's new eBook details everything you need to know about managing and securing non-human identities, and strategies to unify identity security without compromising agility.
Zero-Day Flaws in Counter-Strike 1.6 Let Malicious Servers Hack Gamers' PCs

Zero-Day Flaws in Counter-Strike 1.6 Let Malicious Servers Hack Gamers' PCs

Mar 14, 2019
If you are a Counter-Strike gamer, then beware, because 39% of all existing Counter-Strike 1.6 game servers available online are malicious that have been set-up to remotely hack gamers' computers. A team of cybersecurity researchers at Dr. Web has disclosed that an attacker has been using malicious gaming servers to silently compromise computers of Counter-Strike gamers worldwide by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in the game client. According to the researchers, Counter-Strike 1.6, a popular game that's almost two decades old, contains unpatched multiple remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in its client software that let attackers execute arbitrary code on the gamer's computer as soon as they connect to a malicious server, without requiring any further interaction from the gamers. It turned out that a Russian gaming server developer, nicknamed 'Belonard,' has been exploiting these vulnerabilities in the wild to promote his business and create a...
Town of Salem Data Breach Exposes 7.6 Million Gamers' Accounts

Town of Salem Data Breach Exposes 7.6 Million Gamers' Accounts

Jan 05, 2019
A massive data breach at the popular online role-playing game 'Town of Salem' has reportedly impacted more than 7.6 million players, the game owner BlankMediaGames (BMG) confirmed Wednesday on its online forum. With the user base of more than 8 million players, Town of Salem is a browser-based game that enables gamers (which range from 7 to 15 users) to play a version of the famous secret role game Town, Mafia, or Neutrals. The data breach was first discovered and disclosed on December 28 when a copy of the compromised Town of Salem database was anonymously sent to DeHashed, a hacked database search engine. Over 7.6 Million Users Accounts Compromised The database included evidence of the server compromise and access to the complete gamer database which contained 7,633,234 unique email addresses (most-represented of the email providers being Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.com). After analyzing the complete database, DeHashed disclosed that the compromised data contained...
70% of South Korean Population Victimized In Online Gaming Heist

70% of South Korean Population Victimized In Online Gaming Heist

Aug 27, 2014
More than half of South Korea's 50 million population aged between 15 and 65 have been affected in a massive data breach, compromising their personal information. The data breach came to light when 16 individual were arrested following the theft of about 220 million stolen records from a number of online game, ringtone storefronts and movie ticket sites that contains personally identifiable information related to 27 million victims. The stolen records included actual name, account name, password and resident registration number of the victims, According to the English version of a Seoul-based daily newspaper, the Korea Joongang Daily . Among 16 perpetrators, the South Jeolla Provincial Police Agency arrested a 24-year-old man named 'Kim' , for allegedly obtaining and selling all 220 million personal information including names, registration numbers, account names, and passwords , from a Chinese hacker he met through an online game in 2011. Police estimated the ...
Warning : Fake Grand Theft Auto V torrent spreading malware

Warning : Fake Grand Theft Auto V torrent spreading malware

Sep 05, 2013
Excitement continues .. Rockstar Games schedule the release of latest The Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 5  on September 17, but Cyber Criminals has already released a fake version of GTA 5 contains malware on torrent networks. Romanian security firm BitDefender issued warning that GTA V hasn't been leaked, and during installation you will be asked to complete a survey and send off a text message to gain the serial number. You will then be charged €1 per day on your phone bill and will be infected by a virus. The PC version has yet to be announced, so trying to install it on your PC is a ridiculous idea; but that seems to be what a lot of people are doing. " The survey opens in a web browser and, therefore, is able to perform a geographic redirect to the web page that corresponds to the area you are located in, " said, Bitdefender Senior E-Threat Analyst Bogdan Botezatu. This malware is a generic Trojan Trojan.GenericKDV.1134859 , which can steal u...
Russian hacker illegally ported Xbox LIVE Arcade Game to PC

Russian hacker illegally ported Xbox LIVE Arcade Game to PC

Jun 05, 2013
A Russian hacker who goes by the handle " Barabus " on the GameDev.ru forums illegally crack Xbox Live Arcade game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile , developed by Ska Studios and port it on PC. He claimed that he was justified in illegal cracking: " This is not piracy, this is restoration of justice. The authors are not very nice to publish the game exclusively for the Xbox 360, making it impossible for PC gamers to play in such a great game ."  The port is currently in beta and has no permissions from Ska Studios to even exist. But this isn't a problem, according to the developer, as they say they're not stealing anything from Ska Studios. In the same forum post, the game's creator Ska Studios founder James Silva said: " I guess you could say my reaction is mixed. I'm flattered that there's this much interest in Vampire Smile on PC. I'm not mad about the crack itself, in fact, I'm actually pretty impressed. But I'm bewildered by the cracker's attempt to jus...
90% of pirated games are infected with Malware

90% of pirated games are infected with Malware

Apr 15, 2013
If you've ever been tempted to download a 'hack' for your favorite game to accelerate your progress, or to download a pirated copy of the latest title through a torrent or file-sharing site, watch out ! Anti-virus company AVG has today warns that over 90% of hacked or cracked games downloaded via torrent or file-sharing sites are infected with malware or malicious code. It claimed that a lot of these hacks didn't just contain malware, but were simply malware programs in disguise. " Even if we assume that just 0.1% of the gamer playing the top five titles go looking for a hack - a highly conservative estimate - that means 330,000 people are potentially at risk of falling victim to game hack malware, " said AVG. The prevalence of cracked games, key generators, patches, cheats and more indicates that this is a highly organised, crime based, initiative. " This could lead to the loss of any legitimate, paid-for gaming assets, as well as sensitive p...
Ubisoft's uPlay service hacked, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Leaked

Ubisoft's uPlay service hacked, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Leaked

Apr 10, 2013
Russian hackers have figured out a way to download free games from Ubisoft's servers, exploiting an existing vulnerability in Ubisoft's uPlay launcher. According to reports, the copies of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon that are available on torrent sites are the result of a hack of Ubisoft's uPlay service. The hack has allowed users to download advance copies of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a game which has yet to be officially released. Blood Dragon will be officially released on 1st May, for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. As a proof of the exploit, hackers even posted an 1 hour 30 mins long footage of the game. A Ubisoft spokesman said that the company was aware of the issue and was working to resolve it quickly.  An earlier tweet on their account attributed yesterday's outage to hackers as well, saying " Servers were attacked which limited service from 2:30PM to 9:00PM Paris time [8:30AM to 3:00PM EST]. " The hackers developed a piece of software which tricks ...
Italian team discoveries flaw in Ruzzle protocol, serious menace to privacy

Italian team discoveries flaw in Ruzzle protocol, serious menace to privacy

Apr 02, 2013
We are in digital era, everything is connected to the large networks and applications benefit of even more complex devices that deeply interact with owner, in this scenario security requirements assume a crucial importance and security of overall architecture also depend on security of single components. In these months mobile users have gone crazy for a simple video game named Ruzzle , developed by the Swedish gaming company MAG Interactive, available for iOS and Android devices. The game mechanism is inspired by the board games Boggle and Scrabble. Early 2013 the researcher at Hacktive Security started a study on most spread mobile applications such as popular Ruzzle focusing on the protocol implemented and possible repercussion on user's privacy. Ruzzle protocol use Json for response within a user's session, security analyst discovered that is it possible to tamper them due the absence of control on server side on data sent by the application. The leak of data va...
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