Apex Legends Finale Postponed After Unprecedented Hack

The North American Apex Legends The finals have been postponed after hackers appeared to give competitors cheats during tournament games, in an unprecedented attack on a major esports event.

The Apex Legends esports said the decision to cancel and postpone the event, which took place on Sunday, March 17, was made “because the competitive integrity of this series was at risk.”

The official commentary on the incident ends there, but clips circulating online show that players were suddenly given cheats like aimbots and wall hacks while the matches were in progress.

One clip was shown Top pro Genburten shout “I’m being hacked, I’m being hacked!” while a wall hack revealed the location of every player in the match on his screen. Genburten threw his hands in the air and exclaimed, “It’s a hoax!” and left the game as quickly as he could. “What the hell?” he said, visibly sad.

In another clip, player ImperialHal found himself unable to shoot, apparently after a hacker enabled an aimbot that was then detected and blocked by the game’s anti-cheat mechanism. “I can’t shoot, I can’t shoot,” he said.

There is no precedent for a hacking attack on a private gaming lobby organizing such a high-profile competition. The Genburten clip shows the streamer’s chat with the text “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom.”

The Anti-Cheat Police Department – ​​an X-account that tracks cheating in games – identified the hack as an RCE (Remote Code Execution) exploit that targeted a vulnerability either in Apex Legends itself, or from popular third-party anti-cheat software Top applications, Easy Anti-Cheat.

“An RCE exploit is currently being exploited in (Apex Legends)”, the anti-cheat police Posted. “It’s not certain if it comes from the game or from the actual anti-cheat. I would advise against playing games protected by (Easy Anti-Cheat) or EA titles (until) they fix this or can comment.

The account pointed out that if the hackers had the ability to remotely install cheats on players’ machines, they could do a lot worse. “They have the ability to do anything, like install ransomware software that locks your entire PC,” they said. She advised affected players to protect their personal information, change passwords and perform a fresh installation of the operating system on their PC.

However, the makers of Easy Anti-Cheat said they didn’t think their software was to blame. “At this time, we are confident that no RCE vulnerability is being exploited within EAC,” they posted on X.