Notorious Apex Legends hacker ruined ALGS ‘just for fun’
It's a problem that has sent ripples throughout the entire esports industry. Apex Legends' official multi-million-dollar ALGS circuit was brought to a standstill as a hacker infiltrated various players' accounts and rigged them up with game-breaking cheats.
Arguably the best two players in the world were among those targeted, as TSM's Phillip "ImperialHal" Dosen was forced to have aimbot and DarkZero's Noyan "Genburten" Ozkose was languished with wallhacks.
After the ALGS was overrun, the players were eventually forced to leave the match and bring the entire competition to a close. But, despite having ramifications in a range of titles, that hacker has now revealed their intention was "just for fun".
Apex Legends hacker explains ALGS breach was 'for fun'
During the attacks on both players' profiles, "Destroyer2009 &R4andom" claimed credit through the in-game chatbot, where they also spouted out "meme" quips like "VOTE PUTIN".
Now, Destroyer2009 has spoken to TechCrunch, and revealed that they only did it "for fun" and for the good of Apex, which can now learn how to defend against such attacks. They infer that the next hacker might not be as friendly.
"Just imagine if it wasn’t a joke and we didn’t put any memes in the cheat, I’m pretty sure you can ruin someone’s career if they had a cheat pop up on a tournament," they said. The Apex Legends dev team has responded to the attacks, with Respawn issuing a statement that reads, "Our teams have deployed the first of a layered series of updates to protect the Apex Legends community."
Even EA's Easy anti-cheat software has hit back, shifting the blame from themselves, saying "We are confident that there is no RCE vulnerability within EAC being exploited," before adding that they will be "working closely" with Respawn to prevent another incident.
Apex Legends hacker details why he targeted ImperialHal and Geburten
Click to enlargeOf course, this has painted ImperialHal and Gerburten in different lights, as the TSM star continued to try and play through the cheats, whereas the latter immediately left the game.
Both players have received different waves of feedback on how they handled the situation, and now the hacker has shrugged off the reason why they picked those two specifically, citing "They’re just nice guys."
They were also targeted for their respective followings, as they got "Free attention and views." ImperialHal, whose account is still banned amid the investigations, took to Twitter to say, "I should have just started spin botting on the roof s**t would of been content."
He did recently release a more serious statement though, adding, "I have no doubt [Respawn has] been working really hard to figure out this complex issue so everyone Casual or Pro can go back to what they love doing which is playing Apex Legends."
As for the hacking issue, Destroyer2009 refused to comment on how they infiltrated both accounts, making sure Respawn could figure it out and put a stop to any further malfunctions.
The ALGS is still paused, for the meantime, but it has also spun other titles into a frenzy as they hope to tighten their security and find ways to host online qualifiers without these issues.
