Ubisoft - the international video game developer headquartered in Montreuil, France - has confirmed that it recently sustained a "cyber security incident" that disrupted its games, systems, and related services.
The game developer said in a statement on Thursday that it experienced a cybersecurity incident that "caused temporary disruption" to some of its games, systems, and services the previous week. Ubisoft also noted that “at this time there is no evidence any player personal information was accessed or exposed as a by-product of this incident," and that its games and services are now “functioning normally" after working to restore them.
As a precautionary measure, Ubisoft also stated that it initiated a "company-wide password reset," and that its IT teams are working with "leading external experts" to investigate the cyber incident.
In Canada, the French video game developer has offices in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Saguenay, and Halifax. Internationally, Ubisoft also has offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, Barcelona, Berlin, Milan, Osaka, and Kyiv - among other locations.
The data extortion group LAPSUS$ appears to be responsible for the cyberattack incident against Ubisoft, The Verge reported. Moments after the news ran on the tech news website, a link to the article was shared on the hacker group's alleged channel on the Telegram app, followed by an ominous "smirk" emoji.
LAPSUS$ has claimed responsibility for three other recent data breach incidents. The group had leaked some 190GB of source codes as well as information pertaining to device and software security from the electronics giant Samsung. Lapsus$ also said that it had stolen 1TB of data from GPU manufacturer Nvidia, and had put up a 20GB document archive as proof of its cyberattack against the chipmaker. In addition, LAPSUS$ claimed to have hit Mercado Libre, an Argentinian e-commerce company.
