At the end of February, rumors began circulating that Epic Games had been hacked. One group even claimed responsibility for the crime. As it now turns out, the alleged data theft is just a fake.
The case is quite strange. At the end of February 2024, the ransomware group called Mogilevich claimed to have stolen a bunch of data from Epic Games. Specifically, it is said to have been over 200 gigabytes. This should have included emails, passwords, names, payment information, source code and more.
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The demand was pretty simple: Epic Games should hand over money by today, March 4, 2024. However, the company itself stated that it had never been contacted by Mogilevich. There was only one tweet in which the strangely low sum of 15,000 US dollars was mentioned.
Now the deadline has passed and Mogilevich spoke up again. The result shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as the group admitted that it was just a scam. No data was stolen. The goal was simply to convince would-be hackers that they had the necessary infrastructure. By using big names like Epic Games and the drone manufacturer DJI, Mogilevich also wanted to cause a stir.
The group actually admits that they do not specialize in hacks. Instead, they see themselves as a group of professional fraudsters. The reason for going public is also that the team explicitly wants to portray themselves as “criminal geniuses”.
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