EA’s Woes Continue As Potential Origin Store Hack Is Uncovered

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for EA at the moment. Set against the backdrop of a high profile resignation and multiple attacks on the media, the company seemed to have started to try and turn things around with a largely positive reception to their compensatory game for SimCity owners.

While large numbers of their customers are still feeling a little hurt over those SimCity launch week issues, a decent sale (50% of lots at the moment) and the offer of a free game in compensation seemed to set things at least facing the right direction for EA’s much criticised game store and launching portal. Now, Origin seems to be beset with another problem – it’s been hacked.

The BBC is reporting that the hack – tested in laboratory conditions but not yet believed to be publicly exploited – can be used to run malicious code on a target machine. It revolves around the way Origin links to the games that a user has purchased. The links, used to run installed games, work with a web syntax that can be redirected to install malicious code from the internet and run it on a user’s machine.

There’s no evidence at all that this has ever been used outside of the research setting at RiVuln, the security company who discovered it. It’s also important to note that some personal information about the user is required to make the exploit work – although Origin doesn’t prevent repeated attempts at guessing this information so that step is made a little easier for would-be attackers.

Hopefully, the publication of this study will prompt EA to address the security loophole sooner rather than later. In the meantime, it’s sensible to use unique passwords for every service and website you register with and never give up personal information to any dubious looking source.

Source: BBC

7 Comments

  1. Be careful Peter as Moore may rant about TSA reporting false news. ;) It would serve them right for using online DRM but i hope it won’t get hacked as hackers usually steal information from companies like EA. I suspect they will fix it within the next 24 hours to avoid people abandoning origin.

  2. it gets funnier for EA by the day

  3. Not the best of weeks for EA, They’ll be glad when this week is over.

  4. I feel slightly sorry for the security softies at Origin, it must be tough spending your working day plugging leaks only to have one you’ve not found announced in the press. Then again it must be tough working for Electronic Arses, I hope their pension and their canteen are good, that’d be a silver lining.

  5. I think i might uninstall it again for a while to be safe.

  6. I think, in the spirit of fairness, that its important to mention that this is not just an Origin problem – it is the same kind of exploit as found in Steam at the end of last year, coincidentally found by the same company. Also uPlay also had a similar problem as well

  7. I’ve just had a problem with Origin with my new Account letting me play some of my games and not others like Most Wanted, I’ve been on and off the phone to EA since Saturday but no matter what they did it wouldn’t solve the problem.
    I made a new PSN account this one to replace Wardy77- and a new Origin account and everything seems to be alright touch wood, so for anyone wondering why I’ve changed name yet again that is the reason.

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