Fortnite Hackers are Stealing Thousands of Dollars a Week

Fortnite developer Epic Games makes millions in revenue from skins, emotes, pickaxes, loot boxes, and more. Now hackers are taking a slice of that very lucrative pie.

Fortnite players can show off their collections through their Fortnite locker.However, hackers can see how much players spend on their accounts by viewing their collections. They ‘crack’ player’s accounts and change the password, also enabling two-factor authentication. This means that the original account owner can no longer access their account.

The BBC recently uncovered that teenage hackers are making thousands a week by illegally hacking accounts and selling them. According to the BBC, one anonymous hacker explained he got involved after he was the victim of hacking, saying “The email said that my password had been changed and two-factor authentication had been added by someone else. It felt horrible.”

Two-factor authentication means a player can only access their account by entering a code sent to an email address or app. The hacking victim turned to Twitter to vent his anger, where he then saw more accounts, containing better equipment.

He was offered the chance to buy an account for 25p even though he knew it was worth more. He was aware it was a stolen account, but with many others doing it and making lots of money, he was drawn into the world of ‘Fortnite cracking’.

“I was approached by a cracking team“, he said, “they told me what it was and all about ‘combos’, ‘proxies’ and I guess they showed me how to crack.“

They showed him account names and passwords online, from multiple data breaches. They directed him to hacker tools to input the details on the Fortnite login page. He confirmed that in his one and only cracking session, he accessed over 1000 accounts. However, he said it was a “lucky dip“, some people have expensive skins worth hundreds, some don’t.

Another hacker, a 17 year old Slovenian, claimed that he earned about $16,000 from seven months cracking. He even sent proof of his PayPal accounts to confirm the amount.

If caught, a hacker could be imprisoned under the Computer Misuse Act, possibly receiving a two-year sentence.

The National Crime Agency told BBC that “there is a long-standing link between video games and hacking, and that publishers need to do more to prevent players from being tempted into crime”.

At the time of this post, Epic Games has not commented on the hacking scandal. However, the company is rewarding players with free emotes for enabling two-factor authentication.