What you need to know
- Apex Legends was hit with a major hack during the finals of a pro tournament over the weekend.
- Despite being a private lobby, someone hacked the game and gave participants cheats, including wallhacks and aimbots.
- There's currently no confirmed information on how the breach occurred, but given the serious nature, players should either avoid the game for now or exercise extreme caution.
If you were going to load up Apex Legends this fine Monday, you may want to hold off. An incredible situation arose over the weekend (via Forbes), whereby pro players taking part in the North American Finals were given cheats during the game remotely by an unknown party.
That's right, someone hacked Apex Legends and gave players in a private lobby wallhacks and aimbots in the middle of a game. This wild situation is unprecedented during a major esports event, but more seriously, raises security concerns about the game that could affect everyone.
The hackers have now given 2 Apex Legends pro players cheats in the middle of an ALGS match. ImperialHal has now also been hacked and the hacker forcibly enabled aimbot on his account mid game. Have never seen something like this in esports. pic.twitter.com/VY30Q21DokMarch 18, 2024
Naturally, without an official word from EA or Respawn, the Internet is full of speculation. One running theory is that this is an RCE (remote code execution) which would seem to stack up since this was an online tournament in a private lobby.
It's also unclear as to exactly where the flaw lies, be it within the game or something related to Easy Anti Cheat, which has also clearly failed at its job. Not a good look for a system that also recently found itself added into Halo Infinite, since, you know, it doesn't seem to be able to block cheats.
PSA: There is currently an RCE exploit being abused in @PlayApex. It is unsure whether it comes from the game or the actual anti-cheat (@TeddyEAC ). I would advise against playing any games protected by EAC or any EA titles once they have fixed this or can comment.Currently,…March 18, 2024
So, what can you do? Caution. Extreme caution. Until EA/Respawn or Epic comments on the situation, this could be something that has the potential to affect all players of Apex Legends, or even other games that utilize Easy Anti Cheat. If a private lobby in a professional tournament can be breached in this way, public lobbies are easy pickings.
It would be advisable to avoid Apex Legends for the time being. Aside from shutting down the tournament, nothing else has actually been done at this point. There's nothing to say you would be affected, but there's also nothing to say you wouldn't. Be careful out there.
