Report: Hackers sell League of Legends source code on black market

As we learned a few days ago, hackers stole a source code from Riot Games, which, according to the developers, was a source code for unspecified Riot products. However, after conducting a kind of blackmail, League of Legends and VALORANT developers rejected the hackers’ offer.

Due to this situation, the hackers are now offering the League of Legends source code and its anti-cheat software for $700,000.

Hackers attack Riot Games

Last month, a group of hackers bypassed Riot Games’ security to access its data and got their hands on the League of Legends source code. According to the web portal Motherboard, these hackers asked Riot for $10,000,000 in exchange for the source code, but they flatly refused this blackmail.

The hackers have decided to go to the black market and offer this code for $700,000. The hackers sent some huge PDF files showing that they had the game’s source codes. Furthermore, these hackers stated that if they received the money, they would “remove the code from their servers and provide information on how the breach occurred and offer tips on how to prevent future breaches.”

The big problem with this hack is not that the hackers got their hands on the League of Legends source code. The real problem is the anti-cheat. This could be used to create much more powerful cheats, harming all Riot games and the players themselves.

The goal was not League of Legends

According to the Esports Heaven portal, right now, there is a user named Arkat 001 who is selling the stolen codes. In total, there would be 572,000 files that weigh 72.4 GB. While this sounds terrible for a company like Riot and talking about League of Legends, this could have been much worse.

We say this because the target of the hackers was Vanguard, VALORANT’s anti-cheat software. Remember that this system is one of the most infallible currently available. If its coding fell into the wrong hands, it would be an absolute disaster for the developers. Fortunately for Riot, VALORANT, and the players, the developers shut down the network before the hackers gained access to Vanguard’s source code.

On the other hand, due to Riot Games’ refusal to pay for the “ransom” for the League of Legends source code and the anti-cheat system, the reality likely is that it will not have a significant impact on the games. If it did, there is no doubt that the company would have made an effort to pay for the code and watch its back.

This gives us confidence that Riot believes the stolen source code is not particularly significant and that they are completely prepared to deal with the repercussions if the code is made public.

Header: Riot Games