Insomniac studio victim of cyber attack

This time it was not villains who got caught in the spider's web, but honest developers, who in recent years have been diligently preparing new Spider-Man games for PlayStation and also for PC. The hackers demanded two million in compensation from the company Insomniac to preserve the stolen data, otherwise they would reveal it to the public or to the highest bidder.

Since the attack, hackers have leaked some details about the upcoming games as well as footage revealing gameplay elements of the upcoming Wolverine game. According to the BBC, personal data of employees and internal e-mails were also allegedly stolen.

Other game developers, journalists and fans came to the defense of the popular studio and condemned the cyber attack. Others were urged not to share the stolen content and create any new content with it.

The developer of another very successful game, Alan Wake 2, the company Remedy Games, wrote on the social portal X that it sympathizes with "all affected team members". They are aware of how much effort and dedication of the entire team is required to develop AAA games, especially of such dimensions as Spider-Man.

"No one deserves this. The hackers also exposed the personal data of the employees, which is really embarrassing and rude," wrote Remedy Games.

The attack had serious consequences. Story information and files, as well as the cast of the next Wolverine game, gameplay videos, animations, and design files are being shared on Reddit, Imgur, and elsewhere. Stolen information about planned and undisclosed games is also spreading, not only from Insomniac, but also from parent company Sony.

They also have information on the studio's plans up to 2035, including future Spider-Man games, Ratchet & Clank, the development of new intellectual property and a possible Wolverine sequel, as well as expansion into the larger X-Men franchise. .

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Rhysida cyber group, which also attacked the British Library last month and stole employee contracts and other sensitive information. A spokesperson for the Rhysida group (yes, they have a spokesperson) said the motive was purely financial. Studio Insomniac was labeled as an "easy target", the hack was very easy for their hackers. It only took them 20-25 minutes to hack the domain admin.

A ransomware attack involves infiltrating a computer network and waiting (often for several months) for the best opportunity to extort as much as possible. data. Game studios are quite frequent targets of hackers in recent times.

Last year, the Rockstar Games studio faced similar problems when hackers revealed some details about the highly anticipated game GTA VI. The attack was carried out by another hacker group, which in the past also attacked Uber and the graphics giant Nvidia.