How to Protect Your Games from Being Hacked?

VeePN Research Lab

May 31, 2023

6 min read

How to Protect Your Games from Being Hacked?

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Cheating and video games go hand-in-hand since hiscores began to exist. There might always be someone that wants to get the hands unclean to get one up on the compatriots. Nevertheless, contemporary cheating has transformed from just button-prompt cheat codes to completely-blown cyber attacks on the Internet stealing the credentials of the gamers.

Which are the most hacked video games?

Our world has moved long beyond the “hacked” arcade games, in which inputting the secret code will provide invulnerability and bonus lives. Hacking games became a far more difficult affair. So “good” hackers began striking back against some “real” hackers that ruined their game with illegitimate wins and cheats.

Speaking about video games, the hunger the purpose, the more simple the prey. The higher the play count of a game, the more complicated it is to prevent hacking. Human cost alone might require entire teams to be dedicated to stopping cheaters. Keeping all this in mind, which video games feature the highest hackers’ number?

What are the top five most hacked games?

To measure “hacking” and “cheats” in video games, we would refer to a study that has scanned the Youtube videos’ mass for cheating footage. According to the list, you will check out the most views on hacking and cheating that are related to Youtube clips that shed light on what might be the most hacked games online.

Fortnite. (26,822,000 views).
Overwatch. (9,279,829 views).
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. (6,706,182 views).
Call of Duty: Warzone. (4,189,200 views).
Destiny (2. 3,238,809 views).

It is rather interesting that each of the above-mentioned games is suffering from wall hacks and aimbots’ prevalence. Aimbots lock on automatically to the target’s head if targetting down the sights. They offer instant headshot kills from all across the map. Wallhacks will let the player view foes via walls. They offer one more unfair benefit over the whole competition.

The vast majority of video game cheating videos that are based on this top five list would be specifically related to those 2 hacks. So the desire to be a leader trumped the sense of the fair play of the player, in particular, if being number one might also come with the cash prize incentives.

The reason why hackers aim at video games

While specific high-profile games and gaming tournaments will always be an aim of cheaters that look to chalk easy wins up, there might be newer aims enticing hackers more than the easiest bragging rights.

Thousands of user accounts mean thousands of attempts at brute-forcing the way via the payment data of the victim. With two huge video game breaches already happening in 2021, it is simple to view the reason why some gamers may feel difficulty with huge gaming entities that handle their personal information.

User credentials

As long as a cybercriminal has access to ones’ identifying data, they might inflict untold mayhem on the life of the victim. There was a notorious video game hack in the 2018-2019 hack of the Fortnite creators of the Epic Games.

In November 2018, the bug was found on the Epic Games site, which let the hackers log in as various users and exploit the payment information. So millions of users’ defining credentials were exposed to cybercriminals.

Hackers might also steal and identify any accounts which acquired any of the “rare” cosmetic skins. In some cases, they would be sold for millions of dollars on the dark web. Epic Games has never released the number of accounts that were hacked. They have waited until January 2019 in order to inform the users about the information breach. Some of the disgruntled gamers that had the accounts in Epic Games have filed class-action lawsuits against them.

The source code

2021 is one of the most unlucky years for the video game giants. Then, the hackers aimed at 2 of the most prolific and biggest names in the industry: EA Games (the creators of Star Wars, Battlefront, Fifa) and CD Projekt Red (the creators of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher series). Instead of the user information, hackers stole several games’ source codes, including the newest releases.

CD Projekt Red

In the CD Projekt Red case, hackers have ransacked the servers. They stole the Witcher games and Cyberpunk’s source code, leaving a ransom note on the site. CD Projekt Red did not respond to this note. Therefore, all stolen codes and docs were sold online to the anonymous bidder. Bidding began apparently at one million dollars, with the option of buy-it-now for seven million dollars.

EA Games

EA Games have been victims of the socially engineered attack, which has taken a fair amount of spades of nerve and tech know-how. When hackers gained access to the EA Games Slack channel, they managed to trick IT support into sending them replacement phones, saying that they lost “them at the party the night before.

When the hackers got exactly what they wanted in order to crack into the EA Games’ inner workings, they managed to steal the source code for the soccer simulator Fifa 21, the development tools’ suit, and thousands of gigabytes of other game-generating information. The hackers did not leave the ransom note and went directly to the illegal auction houses in order to sell it off.

How can I protect myself from video game hacks?

The mentioned above huge game entities have proven that they cannot be trusted with handling personal data. This is a wake-up call in order to take some security measures for us.

When not much might be done in order to prevent your information from being lost, you might take some steps to protect yourself. For instance, you might invest in a VPN. However, why is VPN worth it?

It is when you take online gaming seriously. When you connect to the VPN server, you protect yourself immediately from DDoS attacks. When the VPN server hides your IP address, how might the hacker target you?

There are several reasons why VeePN is the best on the market. First of all, it features 2500+ servers in 50 locations. It offers unlimited traffic and bandwidth, requires no connection logs as well as no activity logs, making it the number one option for all game players online.