The Last of Us 2 leak was likely the result of hackers infiltrating a vulnerability in old Naughty Dog games, a new report has suggested. This follows Sony’s own comments that the individuals responsible for the leaks weren’t Naughty Dog employees or contractors.
The recent leaks saw reels of The Last of Us 2 footage being distributed online, spoiling major plot points in the game that were promptly circulated across the internet. Given the reports surrounding Naughty Dog’s alleged overworking of its staff, many theorized that the leak was perpetrated by an individual working for the studio.
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However, Sony later released a statement clarifying that the company had “identified the primary individuals responsible for the unauthorized release of TLOU2 assets,” and that those individuals “are not affiliated with Naughty Dog or SIE.”
In a new Kotaku report, an individual going by the name Pixelbutts shared details of how a group of hackers accessed Naughty Dog’s Amazon servers. According to Pixelbutts, the group uncovered password information included in the code for old Naughty Dog games such as Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us. This vulnerability would theoretically allow the group to also fetch files belonging to Naughty Dog, including The Last of Us 2 content.
This vulnerability was discovered recently and some hackers took full advantage of it, saving TLOU1, UC3, and other dev stuff.
At the time, it was disclosed to me around early February, and was very early on so ~January 2020 it was discovered
— PixelButts (@PixelButts) May 3, 2020
Come March, keys and data was saved, somewhere around 1-3TB, though I can only say 1TB for sure.
They were trying to dump TLOU1 in an effort to get that games key as UC3 had TLOU1 material, so surely TLOU1 had TLOU2? No idea in the end but come April things got spicy
— PixelButts (@PixelButts) May 3, 2020
However, Pixelbutts claims that the hacker group was likely not responsible for spreading the content it had found online. As the group is comprised of Naughty Dog enthusiasts, Pixelbutts believes their methods were discovered by other individuals who acted maliciously.
Sony has not responded to these claims, and according to Pixelbutts the vulnerability was closed by April 30th, meaning no further data has been obtained. However, they claim that 1TB of files were obtained by the hackers before the vulnerability was locked down.
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