There’s a lot of hacking going on these days but this one could be quite dangerous so pay attention. 2K have reported that an “unauthorised third party illegally accessed the credentials of one of our vendors to the helpdesk platform that 2K uses”.
It seems that the hacker then send out an email to 2K players with a malicious link in it that could harvest your login details and passwords. Reports on Twitter suggest that the link was hidden behind a request to download the 2K Launcher or requests to review support cases.
2K have released a statement and asked anyone who may have clicked on the link to reset all your passwords. That’s ALL OF YOUR PASSWORDS, not just your 2K login, your bank account, anything stored in Chrome, the entire lot.
The 2K hack followers a security breach over at Rockstar in which images, videos and code from GTA6 were stolen by a hacker. Here is the statement from Rockstar:
We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorised third-party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto.
At this time we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services, nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects.
We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations.
We will update everyone again soon and, of course, will properly introduce you to this next game when it is ready. We want to thank everyone for their ongoing support through this situation.
You can read more about that here.
Source: Twitter
Andrewww
The recommendation ‘Install and run a reputable ant-virus program’ made me laugh. As if there was any of those that still had an acceptable reputation. And, I thought it is commonly known by now that you generally fare better, security-wise, not having any of these on your system. But, of course, that would require people to have a clue what they’re doing with their PCs and Macs, but most of them don’t.
TrannosaurusBex
Wait, what? I’d consider myself fairly clued up on technology but this would be the first time I’ve heard this take on antivirus software.. unless you’re being sarcastic?
MrYd
He’s only partly horribly wrong.
You’re not better off without it, security-wise. Some have a reputation for slowing things down horribly, and false positives can be a problem. They’re also not hugely effective, especially at identifying new viruses. And have a habit of installing all sorts of extra crap if you don’t not untick the box that says you don’t not wish to not install it.
More important is to actually think for a second before you click on that link that your bank sent you in a badly worded email. And not go installing random stuff from dubious sources.
But a bit of extra protection doesn’t hurt. For Windows, the built in Defender does the job. (Although that seems to have recently had issues with false positives). Macs possibly have a similar thing. (Or are they still working on the “we don’t get viruses!” theory?)
And most importantly, don’t reuse your passwords. If someone gets hacked, no matter how small and insignificant it seems, if you used that same password somewhere more important, that account is highly likely to be compromised too. Use a nice strong password (there’s a whole discussion about what counts there). Use two factor authentication wherever it’s offered, preferably using an authentication app or even a hardware device, and only a text message as a last resort.
So yes, lots of more important things than an anti-virus program, but they’re at least a bit of extra security.
Andrewww
No, I’m not being overly sarcastic, really. But antivirus software regularly proved to be part of the problem, and it lulls you into a false sense of security. It’s much more important to keep your system up to date, have a backup, and not opening every attachment or link you get, instead of paying for additional ‘security’ software that mostly just steals your data like Avast did back then. But, there’s usually not much wrong to let Defender do it’s job if you’re on Windows.
And, unfortunately, what antivirus software cannot help with either, that’s the regular verbal diarrhea of other commentators on websites like this.