Hackers steal Activision’s upcoming COD games, employee data

Hackers have stolen planned content to be released for popular shooter game “Call of Duty” (CoD) and reportedly employee data from gaming giant Activision.

Insider Gaming verified the legitimacy of an alleged Activision data breach from Twitter user @vxunderground.

The Twitter user posted key Call of Duty details and the data contained plans for Modern Warfare 2’s upcoming DLCs, Call of Duty 2023 (Codenamed Jupiter), and Call of Duty 2024 (Codenamed Cerberus), as well as sensitive employee information. Employee information obtained includes full names, emails, phone numbers, salaries, places of work, and more, according to the report.

In a tweet, vx-underground wrote that Activision was breached on December 4.

“@Activision was breached December 4th, 2022. The Threat Actors successfully phished a privileged user on the network. They exfiltrated sensitive workplace documents as well as scheduled to be released content dating to November 17th, 2023,” the user posted.

“Also worth noting that the Threat Actor(s) did attempt to phish other employees,” vx-underground tweeted.

An Activision spokesperson said that the security of our data is paramount, and “we have comprehensive information security protocols in place to ensure its confidentiality”.

“On December 4, 2022, our information security team swiftly addressed an SMS phishing attempt and quickly resolved it. Following a thorough investigation, we determined that no sensitive employee data, game code, or player data was accessed,” the company said.

In January, video game developer Riot Games said that the source codes for its popular video games ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Teamfight Tactics’, or TFT, were stolen in a cyber attack, alongside the code for one of its anti-cheat platforms.