Epic Games Facing Lawsuit Over Hacked Fortnite Accounts

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Epic Games is currently facing a lawsuit over hacked Fortnite accounts and Epic’s alleged failure to acknowledge a vulnerability which supposedly put players’ accounts at risk. The class-action lawsuit has been filed by Franklin D. Azar & Associates and says that Fortnite users affected by this vulnerability have “suffered an ascertainable loss” in the form of fraudulent charges made on their accounts. Epic Games took measures against this vulnerability but the law firm alleges that users have “no guarantee” such measures will protect their information.

Polygon reported on the lawsuit that’s described here at the law firm’s site. The post about the “Fortnite Data Breach Investigation” says a flaw in Epic’s login system “allowed hackers to impersonate players and purchase in-game currency using credit or debit cards on file with the account.”

“This acknowledgement came after Check Point, a cybersecurity research firm, successfully exploited a security vulnerability on an old, unsecured webpage operated by Epic Games,” the law firm said. “Check Point notified Epic Games of the vulnerability in November of 2018. Not until two months later did Epic Games acknowledge the flaw. Epic Games did not disclose how many accounts were affected by the data breach.”

The same post acknowledges that Epic was said to have addressed the breach in a post on its help site. Epic said it was “working hard to try to hunt down password dumps” to protect players’ accounts. The law firm alleges that these protections still resulted in Fortnite users suffering an “ascertainable loss.”

“However, affected Fortnite users have suffered an ascertainable loss in that they have had fraudulent charges made to their credit or debit cards and must undertake additional security measures, some at their own expense, to minimize the risk of future data breaches including cancelling credit cards associated with their Epic Games/Fortnite accounts and changing passwords for those accounts,” the post said. “Furthermore, Fortnite users have no guarantee that the above security measures will in fact adequately protect their personal information. Fortnite users therefore have an ongoing interest in ensuring that their personal information is protected from past and future cybersecurity threats.”

The law firm is currently seeking out those who think they may have a claim against Epic. The developer declined to comment on the investigation when reached by Polygon.

Posted: Aug 11, 2019 4:36 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/08/10/epic-games-lawsuit-hacked-fortnite-accounts/

Comments

MushroomElmPosted: Mon. Aug 12, 2019

Maze If there was a vulnerability that could have been fixed, and instead was abused, epic completely deserves to lose this lawsuit and pay people who have lost their stuff

There definitely is(or was) at one point. I only played 4 games total, in just one day, and by the next day I had 5 or 6 E-mails saying I was having bad log-in issues before they actually got in. Thankfully, I was able to get my own account back.

GnuPosted: Mon. Aug 12, 2019

Idc I will still play fortnite any day of the week, sorry for anyone who has lost their fortnite account. :(

MazePosted: Mon. Aug 12, 2019

If there was a vulnerability that could have been fixed, and instead was abused, epic completely deserves to lose this lawsuit and pay people who have lost their stuff

TTGPosted: Mon. Aug 12, 2019

With all the money they make they should be upping their security, yes to extent they can't do anything but with fortnite they need to ensure everyone's account.

322Posted: Mon. Aug 12, 2019

dah If hackers out there can manage accessing your account and use your bank cards to purchase items in the store/or hack Fortnite accounts and gain access while F2A is enabled that's scary. It's like with Social Media Accounts, you secure your account[s] but there's hackers out their can bypass the method to get access to your account. It's scary and the sad part we can't do anything about it apart from change your account information as soon the attack occurs. I believe this lawsuit which has begun will not change anything particular to be honest. It won't change the security for the player accounts. It's going damaging Fortnite as a company. There will be still hackers out there that can hack and breaching the databases to get access to the accounts. It sucks!

The thing is tho that epic really have no security on accounts or they at least didn't a year ago or so. Someone could hack your account, use your cc and then trade away the items and epic would do nothing about it. They have nothing to pick up suspicious activity. Some times you can't stop hackers but Epic have never put any effort into account security.

AnimePosted: Sun. Aug 11, 2019

Another law suit I see always seems one coming up.

9ntyPosted: Sun. Aug 11, 2019

If hackers out there can manage accessing your account and use your bank cards to purchase items in the store/or hack Fortnite accounts and gain access while F2A is enabled that's scary. It's like with Social Media Accounts, you secure your account[s] but there's hackers out their can bypass the method to get access to your account. It's scary and the sad part we can't do anything about it apart from change your account information as soon the attack occurs. I believe this lawsuit which has begun will not change anything particular to be honest. It won't change the security for the player accounts. It's going damaging Fortnite as a company. There will be still hackers out there that can hack and breaching the databases to get access to the accounts. It sucks!