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from the it's-only-a-game...of-cat-and-mouse dept.
Hackers Steal Wealth of Data from Game Giant EA:
"You have full capability of exploiting on all EA services," the hackers claimed in various posts on underground hacking forums viewed by Motherboard. A source with access to the forums, some of which are locked from public view, provided Motherboard with screenshots of the messages.
[...] In those forum posts the hackers said they have taken the source code for FIFA 21, as well as code for its matchmaking server. The hackers also said they have obtained source code and tools for the Frostbite engine, which powers a number of EA games including Battlefield. Other stolen information includes proprietary EA frameworks and software development kits (SDKs), bundles of code that can make game development more streamlined. In all, the hackers say they have 780gb[sic] of data, and are advertising it for sale in various underground hacking forum posts viewed by Motherboard.
[...] EA confirmed to Motherboard that it had suffered a data breach and that the information listed by the hackers was the data that was stolen.
It's not like they could use the source and SDK to release a new game. What's the point? To better understand how the games work and write cheats? Break the servers? How much is that really worth?
Also at SecurityWeek, BBC, and Ars Technica.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Saturday June 12 2021, @07:23AM
Copyright law doesn't restrict really small fragments, like single words or sentences. So it's possible to argue that most snippets people actually copy are too small to be copyrightable. It's pretty subjective though when a piece of code becomes large enough to qualify as "independent work of art". So you're not guaranteed to actually lose such a suit. Also you're unlikely to get sued in the first place because people who post small code fragments to demonstrate a programming technique wouldn't mind. And nobody else would have authority to sue.