Epic Games responds to alleged ransomware hack, says there is ‘zero evidence’ right now

destructoid.com:

In the early hours of this morning, a ransomware group claimed to have hacked into Epic Games, taking personal data, such as names, payment details, and passwords. However, the Fortnite and Unreal studio has since responded to concerns that anyone has gained access to files, saying it’s investigating but hasn’t found any evidence so far.

According to the Australian site Cyber Daily, a group calling itself the Mogilevich gang is claiming to have gotten hold of around 189GB of personal information from Epic. Some of the data said to have been stolen include “email, passwords, full name, payment information, source code and many other data.”

The group is asking someone who works for the company to “buy the data.” While no price has been mentioned, a deadline of March 4 was given, though there was no clue about what would happen if the demand for money wasn’t met by this date.

There is zero evidence right now that the ransomware claims from Mogilevich are legitimate. Mogilevich has not contacted Epic or provided any proof of the veracity of allegations.

In a statement to Eurogamer a few hours ago (plus the above tweet), Epic Games has said it’s moving fast to investigate these claims.

However, Epic says there is “zero evidence right now that the ransomware claims from Mogilevich are legitimate.” The message goes on to say the studio began investigating “within minutes” of seeing the “screenshot of a darkweb webpage in a Tweet from a third party.”

A recent post on Twitter from Editor-in-Chief of Bleeping Computer Lawrence Abrams says the group is looking for $15K for the allegedly hacked data. However, until Mogilevich contacts Epic, this could well be nothing more than an empty threat. We’ll be keeping an eye on this story, though.