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Social Engineering Attack at EA Games Leads to a Multimillion Dollar Data Breach

$10 Slack cookie used to initiate the attack which ultimately compromises 780 GB of data.

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What is the attack?

  • Hackers gained access to EA's network through social engineering and stole 780GB of data including source code and game engines.

  • Initial access was through purchasing stolen cookies for $10 on the dark web to access EA's Slack. The IT Helpdesk was socially engineered by posing as an employee with a lost phone.

Why did it get through?

  • Stolen cookies directly into a SaaS platform thwart the OAuth and MFA solution, bypassing perimeter defenses.

  • A string of suspicious events from password reset, lateral movement from Slack to more sensitive ecosystems like AWS, followed by the download of a large dataset wasn’t visible.

What is required to solve for this attack?

  • Continuous behavioral analysis across cloud and SaaS ecosystems to detect anomalies in user and application access and behavior.

  • Utilize AI-driven behavioral detection to flag anomalies especially for OAuth application changes or token use.

  • Correlate suspicious events across Cloud + SaaS ecosystems.

Press Links

  • Vice
  • KnowBe4
  • TechRadar