An “underground” economy that could be worth a billion dollars a year, all from the seemingly hacked accounts of popular video games like “Fortnite.”
Night Lion Security, which specializes in digital forensics, has discovered a series of online markets where sets of gaming accounts from just four popular titles, including Fortnite, generate about $ 700 million each year.
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In the newly released report, shared with Fox prior to its publication, Night Lion CEO Vinny Troia suggests the numbers of compromised accounts, and subsequent illegal profits, are only likely to grow if quarantines continue.
Troia, author of “Hunting Cyber Criminals”, tells Fox that “video game accounts are just one of the valuable ones right now because more people are home from work and Fortnite is just the game that a lot of people are playing.”
He adds that although the market for sets of online accounts goes well outside the world of gaming, “from our research, the black market for buying and selling sets of Fortnite accounts is one of the most extensive, and also the most lucrative. “
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Troia says the project began by checking out several “auctions on black markets” where infringement of Fortnite references were packaged and sold in groups.
Desired upgrades for Fortnite players, known as “skins”, seem to be the heart and soul of the market, but more scary purchases can apparently be made.
Screenshot of an online marketplace where apparently hacked Fortnite accounts are bought and sold. A report by Night Lion Security suggests that these sales are contributing to what’s a billion dollar a year economy online. (Night Lion Security)
“Full access” accounts are available for a price, and consider the buyer access to the email address associated with their newly purchased and previously stolen online goods. A variety of publicly available YouTube videos viewed by Fox, which show what looks like successful full-account account purchases, seem to confirm the practice.
Troy’s analysis of both high-quality and low-end vendors showed them averaging $ 25,000 a week, or about $ 1.2 million a year, according to its report. For people who trade references at the “lower end”, profits were still in the ballpark of 5,000 a month, or $ 60,000 a year, yielding an overall average of $ 40,000 a month, when $ 480,000 for each vendor per year in sets of account sales.
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Not only are most consumers unaware when their accounts are compromised, “hacked organizations rarely know where their data ends up,” Troia points out. However, he states that “so far video game companies have not been successful [sic] in slowdown of this underground economy, “especially with higher sellers of these accounts annually between six and seven figures in revenue.
Included in Night Lion’s report is an exchange of text messages with what appears to be a seller of hacked Fortnite accounts. “Fortnite the covid of time. Request. 1m / week, ”reads one message. “It simply came to our notice then. The offer could not match it, ”they added.
A screenshot of an online marketplace where apparently hacked video game accounts are bought and sold. Night Lion Security has released a new report suggesting that the online economy of hacked video game accounts generates $ 1 billion a year.
Troia’s findings have already been shared with the FBI, according to PR spokeswoman Monika Hathaway. And video game accounts are not the only hot items that promote illegal multi-million dollar online economies.
“There are several brands and platforms for entertainment accounts,” says Troia Fox. “HBO + is really hot right now … but even more valuable are bank accounts,” he says, being traded on a variety of more exclusive forums.
For video games, the problem is also not unique to Fortnite. Other popular titles such as Roblox, Runescape, and Minecraft “appear even more profitable,” Troia writes.
Combined with Fortnite’s underground economy, the resale of sets of accounts for just those four games is estimated to generate about $ 700 million a year, he says. And even that can just scratch the surface.
“We can then confidently predict that an additional revenue of 30%, like $ 300m / yr, could be generated by counting the black market sales for all other existing video games, and conserving the entire hacked video game market at $ 1 billion. create industry this year, “concludes Troia.
“Fortnite” developer Epic Games did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the story.
