Last week, it was announced that Epic Games had allegedly been hacked by a ransomware group known as Mogilevich. However, no evidence came to light, and in fact, the group responsible has come forward to say it was nothing more than a moneymaking scam.
Call themselves “professional fraudsters”
According to a recent report from Cyber Daily, the hackers claiming they stole almost 200GB worth of Epic Games data has admitted that none of it was true. A spokesperson for Mogilevich – who goes by the alias Pongo – has said the group is not a “ransomware-as-a-service,” but are, in fact, “professional fraudsters.”
It seems the plan was to take “advantage of big names to gain visibility as quickly as possible,” with the intention of tricking a buyer into purchasing the data. At the time of the claim, the price was said to be set at $85,000.
Pongo is quoted as saying the following:
The price for the alleged one-terabyte database was one hundred thousand dollars. We were immediately contacted by interested people, one of them was put at ease, as if he were the boss at the time.
There were concerns at Epic that the company had been hacked by the relatively new ransomware group, which claimed to have taken hold of personal information, such as names, payment details, etc.
However, after a swift investigation, Epic found no evidence that any hack had taken place, and Mogilevich had not been in contact at the time.
Next to Steam, Epic Games is one of the most popular digital storefronts for PC gaming. Hacking data from the servers could prove quite a devastating blow for the company. However, in this instance, it turned out to be an empty threat.
