Electronic Arts (EA), the leading US video game publisher, was hacked recently. The company revealed in a statement that a data breach led to 780GB worth of data being stolen.

EA, the publisher of popular video game franchises like FIFA, Battlefield, Sims, Apex Legends, and more said the hackers had managed to get their hands on game source codes and internal development tools.

"We are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen," an EA spokesperson said in its statement on the matter.

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EA told The Verge, that unlike the recent cyber-attacks on companies like Colonial Pipeline and JBS the data breach was not a ransomware attack. EA also indicated that it was working with law enforcement officials to investigate the matter.

The hackers reportedly used stolen cookies and EA’s slack channel to impersonate an EA employee and then steal the data. Cookies often save the login credentials of users for various websites and apps. The representatives from the hacker group talked to Vice's Motherboard to explain their process in accessing the secure data.

While EA isn’t the first video game company to be hit by a hacking attempt which resulted in a source code leak, the recent attack highlights the increasing frequency of cyberattacks on large corporations.

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Hackers have previously stolen Polish company CD Projekt Red’s source code for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, Japanese video game giant Nintendo saw the source code for many SNES and Nintendo 64 games leaked as well.

The recent attack sent the stock prices of cybersecurity firms on an upward movement while EA’s own stock slumped as a result.

(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)