Apex Legends postpones competition amid hacking concerns

Two pro players were forcibly given cheats while livestreaming their finals matches. | Image: Respawn Apex Legends has postponed the North America finals for its Global Series championship over concerns that hackers have compromised the “competitive integrity” of the game. Two professional players from major teams were targeted while livestreaming on Sunday by an attack that forcibly applied advantage-granting cheats during competitive gameplay. The cause of these attacks hasn’t been officially verified, leading to speculation that the hack may have been delivered via Apex Legend’s anti-cheat protections. An exchange posted by a cheat monitoring account on X claims that the attacker found an RCE, or remote code execution, exploit to run their code directly on the players’ computers. A Twitch clip of DarkZero’s Noyan “Genburten” Ozkose shows a UI interface for aimbot software appearing on his screen, at the same moment that a message reading “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom” begins repeatedly spamming chat. “I’m getting hacked,” Genburten said, while raising his hands to show he was no longer in control. Genburten noticed he could see other players through walls and promptly abandoned the match. MULTI BILLION DOLLAR ESPORT BTWW pic.twitter.com/e1B9lfDt3C— DZ_Genburten (@Genburten) March 18, 2024 TSM’s Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen was also targeted, with admins shutting down the game lobby after the player realized an aimbot had been applied to his account. While not much is known about “R4ndom” — one of the two aliases mentioned during Genburten’s hack — “Destroyer2009” is recognized for previous questionable activity targeting Apex Legends players like ImperialHal and Mande. Neither EA nor Respawn Entertainment have announced when the finals are expected to resume or if the hack presents any risk to wider Apex Legends players. The official Apex Legends Esports account on X says that more information will be shared “soon.” We have reached out to both companies for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

Mar 18, 2024 - 20:20
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Apex Legends postpones competition amid hacking concerns
A screenshot taken from Apex Legends season 8.
Two pro players were forcibly given cheats while livestreaming their finals matches. | Image: Respawn

Apex Legends has postponed the North America finals for its Global Series championship over concerns that hackers have compromised the “competitive integrity” of the game. Two professional players from major teams were targeted while livestreaming on Sunday by an attack that forcibly applied advantage-granting cheats during competitive gameplay.

The cause of these attacks hasn’t been officially verified, leading to speculation that the hack may have been delivered via Apex Legend’s anti-cheat protections. An exchange posted by a cheat monitoring account on X claims that the attacker found an RCE, or remote code execution, exploit to run their code directly on the players’ computers.

A Twitch clip of DarkZero’s Noyan “Genburten” Ozkose shows a UI interface for aimbot software appearing on his screen, at the same moment that a message reading “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom” begins repeatedly spamming chat. “I’m getting hacked,” Genburten said, while raising his hands to show he was no longer in control. Genburten noticed he could see other players through walls and promptly abandoned the match.

TSM’s Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen was also targeted, with admins shutting down the game lobby after the player realized an aimbot had been applied to his account. While not much is known about “R4ndom” — one of the two aliases mentioned during Genburten’s hack — “Destroyer2009” is recognized for previous questionable activity targeting Apex Legends players like ImperialHal and Mande.

Neither EA nor Respawn Entertainment have announced when the finals are expected to resume or if the hack presents any risk to wider Apex Legends players. The official Apex Legends Esports account on X says that more information will be shared “soon.” We have reached out to both companies for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

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