LAPSUS$: How a Sloppy Extortion Gang Became One of the Most Prolific Hacking Groups

LAPSUS$: How a Sloppy Extortion Gang Became One of the Most Prolific Hacking Groups

2 years ago
Anonymous $R5WK5a8uaN

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3abedn/who-is-lapsus-hacking-gang

“I want to send a message to EA by you,” the hacker wrote to me in an encrypted chat. “What is the motive to hack? Obviously money right?”The hacker and their associates, part of a group which later dubbed itself LAPSUS$, had stolen a massive cache of data from video game publishing giant Electronic Arts after breaking into the company’s internal systems. That included source code for FIFA and EA’s Frostbite game engine; technical breakdowns on how to generate crowds in virtual worlds, and software development kits that EA used to streamline the creation of games.

The hackers wanted to monetize that access by extorting EA. But they were shockingly bad at it. They didn’t really know who to send the demand to, so they asked me as a journalist who was in contact with EA over the breach, to act as a conduit. The extortion effort was so sloppy that later an EA spokesperson asked me to put them in touch with the hackers. (I declined both requests).