Fortnite Teen Hackers 'Earning Thousands of Dollars a Week' (bbc.com)

Children as young as 14 are making thousands of pounds a week as part of a global hacking network built around the popular video game Fortnite. From a report: About 20 hackers told the BBC they were stealing the private gaming accounts of players and reselling them online. Fortnite is free to play but is estimated to have made more than 1bn pound ($1.25) through the sale of "skins", which change the look of a character, and other add-ons. This fuels a growing black market. Hackers can sell player accounts for as little as 25p or hundreds of pounds, depending on what they contain. The items are collected as in-game purchases but are purely cosmetic and do not give gamers any extra abilities. Fortnite-maker Epic declined to comment on the investigation but said it was working to improve account security. The game has more than 200 million players.

Comments

Devaluation of the British pound

[stevenvi]

is estimated to have made more than 1bn pound ($1.25)

Yikes! I didn't realize that Brexit had such an impact on the British economy. Or that Fortnight had only turned a buck twenty-five in profit. Must be Hollywood accounting.

Easy Marks

[alvinrod]

I'm guessing that there's almost no hacking going on. The easiest way accounts get stolen for a game like this is for some unscrupulous individuals to create a fan site (or even something more shady like a cheat site) that requires an account to access the site. Since most people have abysmal security practices, they reuse the same password.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to buy an account as well, especially if everyone in the game knows that there are loads of people getting their accounts stolen. Digital goods are trivial to repossess and restore to the original owner.