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On 17th March, TSM’s Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen and DarkZero’s Noyan “Genburten” Ozkose were hacked in the middle of a big tournament. This sent the whole community and Apex Legends' esports scene into a disarray. Following this, there were discussions as to whether or not this was an RCE (Remote Code Execution) hack. To give some clarity, the person behind the hacking incident, Destroyer2009, talked about why they did this in an interview with Tech Crunch.
Destroyer2009 Opens Up About the ALGS Hack
On 17th March, at the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) North America (NA) League Split 1 Finals, some pros faced setback due to a notorious hacker in the Apex Legends community getting access to the tournament's private lobby. Destroyer2009 and another user named R4ndom compromised the accounts of Genburten and ImperialHal during the event.
The message that was displayed on their screens read, "Apex hacking global series by Destoryer2009 &R4ndom."
Following this, in an interview with TechCrunch, hacker Destroyer2009 took credit for the hacks and stated that he did it "just for fun" and with the intention of forcing the developers to fix the vulnerability he found and exploited.
Clarifying that the hacks never went outside the game, Destroyer2009 reportedly said, "I really don’t want to go into the details until everything is fully patched and everything goes back to normal... It has nothing to do with the server and I’ve never touched anything outside of the Apex process.” He added that he did not hack the two players’ computers directly.
In the interview, Destroyer2009 also noted that there was no malicious intent behind his action. He said to Tech Crunch, "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."
Respawn Entertainment's Statement
On 20th March, Respawn Entertainment released a statement about the hacking incident that brought ALGS NA League Split 1 Finals to a standstill. It said, "On Sunday, a few professional Apex Legends player accounts were hacked during an ALGS event. Game and player security are our highest priorities, which is why we paused the competition to the address the issue immediately. Our teams have deployed the first of a layered series of updates to protect the Apex Legends player community and create a secure experience for everyone."
Likewise, Apex Legends' anti-cheat, Easy Anti-Cheat, clarified that it was not an RCE hack. It tweeted, "We have investigated recent reports of a potential RCE issue within Easy Anti-Cheat. At this time - we are confident that there is no RCE vulnerability within EAC being exploited. We will continue to work closely with our partners for any follow up support needed."
