Teenage Fortnite hackers are making thousands every week The issue of account hacking and selling in the world\u2019s most popular game, Fortnite, is still a problem despite Epic Games\u2019 best efforts, with players as young as 14 raking in big money. Fortnite Battle Royale is a free-to-play game, making its money from in-game cosmetics like character skins, backpacks, dances, and a whole lot more. So far, this model has earned the publishers in excess of $1 billion in revenue from in-game purchases alone \u2013 but they\u2019re not the only ones making a mint off the popularity of the game. Each player who buys skins and other items keeps them in a \u2018locker\u2019. Players can buy as many or as few skins as they like, but they are tied to their single Epic Games account. More: Fortnite Season 7, Week 3 challenges and how to complete them \u2013 Ziplines, ski lodges, doorbells and more – Hackers are able to break into these accounts, change the password and apply two factor authentication, locking the owner out of their own account. 20 hackers told the BBC that these accounts can then be sold to others \u201cfor as little as 25p or hundreds of pounds\u201d, depending on the value of account\u2019s locker. \u201cI was approached by someone who said I could buy an account for 25p and I could clearly see the account was worth a lot more, I bought it.\u201d He was then told that he too could \u2018crack\u2019 accounts, simply by purchasing \u2018off the shelf\u2019 tools, and in a single day managed to crack over 1,000 accounts. He claims within his first few weeks, he had made over \u00a31,500 (~$1900) selling accounts. \u201cIt\u2019s lucky dip basically, you either get a good account or you don\u2019t. People like the rarity of the \u2018skins\u2019 and it\u2019s about the look of them and showing off to friends.\u201d Another hacker, 17 years old from Slovenia, claimed they had made \u00a316,000 (~$20,000) in seven months of cracking accounts. If caught, these individuals could be charged under the Computer Misuse Act and face a two year prison sentence, but one hacker said \u201cYou can\u2019t get caught, nobody checks it.\u201d How can you protect yourself from Fortnite hackers? The hackers told the BBC that it is \u201cextremely hard\u201d to hack an account which has two-factor authentication. Epic Games, in an attempt to better protect accounts, offered a free emote to players who turned on two-factor authentication, but it seems the developers are still working on a more fool-proof method.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teenage Fortnite hackers are making thousands every week The issue of account hacking and selling in the world\u2019s most popular game, Fortnite, is still a problem despite Epic Games\u2019 best efforts, with players as young as 14 raking in big money. Fortnite Battle Royale is a free-to-play game, making its money from in-game cosmetics like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}