Activision, one of the world’s largest video game publishers and owners of the Call of Duty franchise, was victim to a data breach late last year. This is just another in what seems to be a recent increase in hacking and social engineering attacks on large video game companies.
The hackers behind the attack phished a privileged user on Activision’s networks and managed to steal a large amount of information, including not only sensitive workplace documents but also the schedule for upcoming Activision releases, particularly for Call of Duty.
The stolen information shows plans for as far as November 2023.
Acitvision’s network was breached on December 4th, 2022. However, the company successfully managed to keep the attack quiet, preventing the leak of sensitive information until now.
Information about the breach was finally revealed by the Twitter account @vxunderground today. As the Tweet contains inappropriate content, we did not include it in this article.
As vx-underground goes on to explain, the agents involved attempted to phish information from several other Activision employees but were not successful.
The leaked information shows plans for Call of Duty releases throughout 2023. Separated into two seasons, it lists everything releasing for CoD during the upcoming seasons 3 and 4.
2 new Operations, 3 New Weapons, 3 Core Maps, 1 Battle Map, 5 Gunfights, 1 Spec Ops, and a battle pass are listed as coming to CoD during Season 3, which will last from March to May. A nearly identical list of releases are scheduled for Season 4, which lasts from May to July.
While these new CoD releases are exciting, this attack on Activision was an unfortunate and unprecedented breach of security. The employees involved had to endure inappropriate comments being posted in official company channels under their names, and its unclear the scope of what else was stolen in the attack.
In response, we may see releases slow down as Activision recovers from the attack, similar to the social engineering attack Riot Games suffered from earlier this year.