Selling stolen login credentials for popular fight royale game Fortnite nets the most respected hackers more than $1 million per year, according to a brand-new research report.
Released by Night Lion Security, the report delves into the extremely profitable black market for taken video game accounts, which has grown to become a billion-dollar industry in the last few years.
Fortnite is at the heart of this underground economy, representing numerous millions of dollars worth of illegal sales.
The demand for taken Fortnite accounts is driven predominantly by the appeal of character skins, which modify the gamer’s appearance in-game, but have no bearing on gameplay. The higher the amount of unusual skins hung on an account, the more it will sell for on the black market.
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On average, Fortnite account sellers are said to make $40,000 per month (or $480,000 each year), with the highest earners generating a whopping $1.2 million per year – more than the vast majority of medical professionals, lawyers, bankers and CEOs.
In one taped instance, a batch of accounts with unusual skins attached was cost as much as $38,000 through a personal auction held over messaging platform Telegram. Accounts that own the highly coveted “Reconnaissance Specialist” skin, meanwhile, are said to fetch circa $2,500 each.
Fortnite hackers
In order to gain access to Fortnite accounts, hackers utilize login credentials gotten through previous data breaches, which are then tested against a database of Fortnite players.
This type of attack is referred to as “credential stuffing” and counts on the truth that lots of people reuse passwords throughout numerous online accounts. For instance, with one e-mail and password mix, a hacker could access a person’s Facebook, Gmail, Netflix and Amazon accounts – and perhaps their Fortnite account too.
” Hacking groups like Gnostic Players and Shiny Hunters account for a vast bulk of breaches including taken user information, and are indirectly accountable for sustaining an entire criminal economy of stolen accounts,” discussed Vinny Troia, founder of Night Lion Security.
” These stolen accounts are then packaged and resold throughout a number of sub-ecosystems, the most rewarding being the market for hacked video gaming accounts.”
Specialized tools are then used to identify whether the stolen qualifications can be utilized to access active Fortnite accounts. According to DonJuju, described as a “highly regarded cracker in underground hacking circles”, leading splitting tools can carry out between 15,000 – 20,000 login checks per minute (or 500 per second).
While Fortnite developer Impressive Games has procedures in place to avoid users from performing many login efforts in a short area of time, hackers bypass this filter using proxy rotation services that give each login demand a brand-new IP address, thereby concealing the suspicious activity.
Accounts that have been effectively compromised are pressed through software application designed to check which skins exist on-account. Once their value has been examined, the accounts are then bundled together to be sold as a single batch to a reseller, which serves as the store front for private buyers.
The marketplace for Fortnite account sales, consisting of purchases made by both resellers and private purchasers, is said to be worth $142 million each year – and possibly more. The whole market – consisting of prohibited sales linked with popular video games such as Minecraft and Runescape – is stated to be worth more than $1 billion.
To protect versus account compromise, users are advised to utilize various passwords for all online accounts and safeguard each with multi-factor authentication where possible.
Impressive Games is yet to react to our ask for remark about the steps in place to secure players versus account hijacking.
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