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Rockstar Games Hacked, Hackers Threaten a Massive Data Leak If Not Paid Ransom
- gaythread 6mo agoDo we not have GTA5 source already?
- bakugo 6mo agoYes, but GTA5 leaked a decade after its release. Rockstar didn't really suffer any significant damage from it. If 6 leaks before release, though, that's a completely different story. I can imagine them actually paying a ransom if that happened.
- dvratil 6mo agoMaybe I'm missing something, but how would GTA6 source leak really harm Rockstar? I mean it's unlikely it would be possible to compile a full working game from the leak, and even if so, it's such a non-trivial task, that I don't believe it would hurt sales /that/ much. The only thing I can imagine is the story would get spoiled on the internet, but that's about it.
- mh- 6mo agoI feel the need to say it shouldn't be this way, to avoid an onslaught of replies, but: It would be dramatically easier to discover and exploit vulnerabilities/glitches in their multiplayer experience, which is their cash cow.
- 3eb7988a1663 6mo agoOn the other hand, maybe the community could submit bug fixes for loading times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339
- leapingdog 6mo agoI may be misremembering a drunken conversation with a developer but IIRC the root cause was choice of cross-platform APIs available in early 2010s & the JSON file was tiny when introduced.
- 3eb7988a1663 6mo agoThe problem was not in delivering JSON. There were better ways, but it was good enough. The failure is that loading times had been a complaint for years, and nobody involved lifted a finger. It would be impossible to use the platform without feeling the pain.
- leapingdog 6mo agoI don't really disagree. The software was released on 7 platforms, not counting multiple Windows versions. I don't know the risks or what platforms changes impact today or the test effort involved. I expect "it's still functioning as expected" was the default.
- mgol94 6mo agoI would speculate that it’s not about individuals compiling and playing without paying, but that with access to the codebase, creating cracks and online cheats would be trivial, which might actually hurt their bottom line
- esskay 6mo agoIt'd make it a pain to stop abuse of their online platform when it launches, which is financially problematic given gta 5 online made rockstar billions.
- JCattheATM 6mo agoPeople would compile it and unofficial community servers would quickly pop up.
- Cpoll 6mo ago> non-trivial task This is the sort of challenge hackers love, and the prestige is enormous. If it's possible with the leak, I have to imagine some group will do it.
- leapingdog 6mo agoIf GTA6 leaks they will not release this year & layoffs will follow. Different era, but shades of the Half Life 2 leak.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- c420 6mo ago[dead]
- rundigen12 6mo agoI honestly expected the demand to be "Release GTA 6 soon or else we will". ...The fact that they're just demanding money is a little disappointing. ;-)
- gloxkiqcza 6mo agoMany ransomware groups of today operate in the same way a legal tech startup would. It’s a large organization with clear goals, not just some guys fooling around. It’s a funny thought tho.
- robotburrito 6mo agoYeah but large tech companies don’t just operate by breaking laws like this.
- luqtas 6mo agolaws that allow big players hurt minorities are any good? Rockstar recently had a strike from their workers by their abuse and layoffs
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- EA-3167 6mo agoSure they do, Uber is probably the most famous in that regard, but plenty break things and pay a fine later. In fact I’d say that sort of law breaking is downright routine. The key difference is the ability to afford a really good legal and lobbying team.
- potsandpans 6mo agoYou sure about that?
- specialist 6mo agoHow do laypersons (noobs) like me learn about this stuff? Like Wired magazine technical level. I've just started Darknet Diaries podcast. So great. When I worked on electronic medical records, I assumed it was just a matter of time until we were hacked (too). All the most banal reasons: many vendors, shared passwords, root/admin access, etc. I imagine things haven't improved much since.
- cbg0 6mo agoUpdate: 4/11/26, 11:45 a.m. ET: Rockstar Games confirmed that a data breach has happened. A spokesperson sent over this statement to Kotaku: “We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach. This incident has no impact on our organization or our players.”
- plmpsu 6mo agoThat's what I would say regardless of if I was considering paying or not.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago> “Rockstar Games, your Snowflake instances were compromised thanks to Anodot.com. Pay or leak. This is a final warning to reach out by 14 Apr 2026 before we leak, along with several annoying (digital) problems that’ll come your way. Make the right decision, don’t be the next headline.” Anyone familiar with "Snowflake" enough to say what sort of data was typically hosted there? Judging by the website and the lack of specifics about the data, I'm guessing it's less about assets, artifacts and stuff like that, and more about financial data and general/generic "business" stuff?
- hilariously 6mo agoIt's a database, but you could store basically any OLAP type things there, all your stuff for aggregate customer data for instance.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoSure, but some databases are sold/bought more by brand recognition and for the type of data rather than actual technical capabilities. Don't ask me why, just very familiar with people making those sort of choices.
- hilariously 6mo agoMost I would say, but with snowflake it can be anything from some exec's fever dream to them actually paying 10x what they should and accomplishing said fever dream; I've worked on the entire spectrum when it comes to Snowflake.
- Maxion 6mo agoIn my experienced Snowflake is often used as a data warehouse.
- tempaccount5050 6mo agoI've seen companies literally mirror every piece of data they have in snowflake to do AI/analytics stuff. There's probably a lot of of shit in there.
- seydor 6mo agoHow fitting with their games. They should include the hackers in GTA7
- mschuster91 6mo agoPlease, please let that leak be the source code of GTA SA :D
- DANmode 6mo agoWhat are you trying to do that you can’t?
- mschuster91 6mo agowell GTA3 and Vice City got fully decompiled by some geniuses, 5 got leaked, the missing ones are San Andreas and 4.
- DANmode 6mo agoI know. So, are you collecting, reading? Or trying to do something?
- mschuster91 6mo agoThe former. Having actual code to look at how people used to do things in the past, especially under the constraints that console games used to have before everything got boiled down to either a mobile phone SoC (Nintendo Switch) or a PC in shrinkwrap (Xbox, Playstation), is worth to have available in some public form.
- chistev 6mo agoCoincidentally and Interestingly, again, I was reading an old thread from 2015 titled - ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway The top comment says - "NEVER EVER PAY RANSOM MONEY. Please. Even if your business will suffer it will suffer a lot more if you do pay since now it is known you'll cave. Also: you are making the problem larger for others." The top response to that comment says - "From their blog: https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/ https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/ At around 2PM, the attackers began directly attacking the infrastructure of our upstream providers and the datacenter itself. The coordinated assault on our ISP exceeded 100Gbps and attacked not only the datacenter, but also routers in Zurich, Frankfurt, and other locations where our ISP has nodes. This coordinated assault on key infrastructure eventually managed to bring down both the datacenter and the ISP, which impacted hundreds of other companies, not just ProtonMail. At this point, we were placed under a lot of pressure by third parties to just pay the ransom, which we grudgingly agreed to do at 3:30PM Geneva time to the bitcoin address 1FxHcZzW3z9NRSUnQ9Pcp58ddYaSuN1T2y. This was a collective decision taken by all impacted companies, and while we disagree with it, we nevertheless respected it taking into the consideration the hundreds of thousands of Swiss Francs in damages suffered by other companies caught up in the attack against us. We hoped that by paying, we could spare the other companies impacted by the attack against us, but the attacks continued nevertheless. This was clearly a wrong decision so let us be clear to all future attackers – ProtonMail will NEVER pay another ransom. " Full thread here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10523583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10523583
- ronsor 6mo agoMost hackers actually keep their promises if paid the ransom, nowadays. It sounds perverse but the incentives require it: if payment didn't bring resolution, no one would pay. As a result, all of the big gangs avoid scamming.
- eugenekolo 6mo ago..again?
- bsimpson 6mo agoHoly shit - according to the same article, an autistic teen last hacked them and was sentenced to life in an asylum!
- Bender 6mo agoRockstar Games Hacked, Hackers Threaten a Massive Data Leak If Not Paid Ransom This is just my opinion but that is not much of a threat and I think they should ignore it. Rockstars social platform has always had abhorrent security and players have always been able to easily doxx one another, know where other players live, boot each other out of games to the point of requiring multiple mod-menus just to be in a multi-player lobby in my experience thus extortion of money for player data from snowflake is just redundant.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- JCattheATM 6mo ago> players have always been able to easily doxx one another, know where other players live, That sounds unlikely.
- The_SamminAter 6mo agoThe actual case is that GTA Online sessions are P2P. As such, when connected to a session, your IP is exposed to the other players. This doesn’t really qualify as a ‘doxx,’ as that in and of itself is not particularly PII. Furthermore, playing without a menu is possible and has been for years. It just helps to boot yourself into a new/empty session every once in a while.
- shaewest 6mo agoFrom what I recall, while the sessions are P2P, they've implemented proxies between players to prevent the old problem of IPs being exposed.
- raks619 6mo agothey should just leak the game, rockstar should take the opportunity to create gta7 by training AI using gta6 and then making lifelike visuals. would be better.
- joshmn 6mo agoI was in federal prison with Sebastien Raoult, one of the ShinyHunters guys. We were in the same unit and talked regularly. I was about mid-way through my bid when another inmate told me "new guy in B3 is a another hacker." I got really excited—I'd have someone to talk shop with, at the very least. My takeaway from him was that they're a bunch of contemporary "script kiddies" with a lot of time on their hands. This tracks.
- thi2 6mo agoAnd then they handed out free beer in the Paulaner Garten
- DANmode 6mo agoIf you’re going to make a point, could you?
- raymond_goo 6mo agoIt's a German expression for "you are lying"
- DANmode 6mo agoSeems like a goofy thing to lie about. Might even be a goofy thing to tell the truth about!
- iknowstuff 6mo agoAnd they gave this guy life in prison! Unlucky/stupid to do it after turning 18. https://kotaku.com/gta-6-hacker-sentenced-prison-life-1851118094 https://kotaku.com/gta-6-hacker-sentenced-prison-life-185111... def curious to hear your story if you’re willing to share
- joshmn 6mo agoI didn’t know about this case. When you said it I thought it must have been a US federal case. Nope. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844197
- apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo agoHonestly, it's gotta feel like Christmas to e-criminals right now. So many new toys and ways to scam or extort people. And so many potential innovations to explore as well lol.
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- TrailingArbutus 6mo agodidn't this already happen like, exactly this way already?? haha/? (bro i NOT gonna survive)