Security News > 2020 > August > Stolen Fortnite Accounts Earn Hackers Millions Per Year

UPDATE. Hackers are scoring more than a million dollars annually selling compromised accounts for the popular Fortnite video game in underground forums.

After tallying the auction sales for several high-end and low-end Fortnite account sellers over a three month period, researchers found that on the high end, sellers averaged $25,000 per week in account sales - roughly $1.2 million per year.

"The market for stolen account sales is much larger than just the gaming industryHowever, from our research, the black market for the buying and selling of stolen Fortnite accounts is among the most expansive, and also the most lucrative," said researchers with Night Lion Security in a report last week.

These Fortnite accounts are initially hacked via simple brute force and password cracking: Username-and-password combinations can be extracted from data breaches of other companies, and checked against Fortnite accounts, as many people reuse passwords.

In 2019, Epic Games patched a bug that could have allowed hackers to break into millions of Fortnite accounts and steal virtual currency or resell virtual goods.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/stolen-fortnite-accounts-earn-hackers-millions/158796/