Riot Games may be delaying patches for its games for some time.
The popular video game developer recently became the target of a social engineering attack that breached its security and affected the release of its updates.
Riot Games has yet to announce if it already shored up its cybersecurity and when the updates will go live following the attack.
Riot Games Security Breach Details
Please be patient with us as we work through this, and we’ll keep you posted as we continue our investigation.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) January 20, 2023
Riot Games mentioned in its announcement on Twitter that it had become a victim of a security breach using a social engineering attack that compromised its development environment.
According to its tweet, which it posted on Jan. 21, it has yet to finish investigating what caused the attack to occur. However, it did reveal that the attack affected its ability to release content.
Thankfully, Riot Games reported that it didn't find any sign that the hacker compromised their data or personal information.
However, due to the security breach's effect, it will be delaying the release of the updates for its games, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and Valorant, while its teams work to fix its development environment.
"Please be patient with us as we work through this," Riot Games tweeted. "and we''ll keep you posted as we continue our investigation."
13.2 was focused on further balance updates for Monsters Attack! This issue may impact our ability to release the full scope of balance changes planned, but we’re working to implement the most meaningful of those possible through a hotfix at our scheduled patch time. https://t.co/ur9IuR7aF4
— Teamfight Tactics (@TFT) January 20, 2023
According to a tweet on the official Teamfight Tactics Twitter page, its 13.2 update largely consisted of more balance updates for its Monsters Attack! feature, but with the security breach, the team behind the League of Legends spinoff would be unable to update the game in time.
As such, they are working to implement the most meaningful of the balance updates that could be uploaded through a hotfix at its scheduled patch time. Andrei van Roon, the head of Riot Games' League Studio, mentioned in a tweet that the updates that can't be hotfixed, such as art changes, will be moved to a later date.
Heads up, players. This may impact our delivery date for Patch 13.2. The League team is working to stretch the limits of what we can hotfix in order to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time still. https://t.co/DJ8qAKSdQi
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) January 20, 2023
Meanwhile, the official Twitter page of League of Legends tweeted that the team behind the game will follow in Roon's example and is working to stretch the limits of what it can hotfix to deliver the majority of the planned and tested balance changes on time.
The team behind Valorant also announced on Reddit that its next patch, along with the game's preliminary PBE6.2 will be delayed until early February due to the security breach.
What Is A Social Engineering Attack?
A social engineering attack is a manipulation technique that cybercriminals use to capitalize on regular human behavior and gain private information or access to sensitive systems. Synopsis and Imperva mentioned in their report that the attack starts with a fake pretext familiar to targets, which then takes advantage of the victim's cognitive biases to earn their trust and provide a false sense of security.
As such, it is possible that the cybercriminal who perpetuated the security breach may have posed as a trustworthy employee in Riot Games to get the access it needed to hack into the company's systems.
