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The last weekend shocking leak of footage from The last of us part II It was likely committed by hackers who exploited a security vulnerability in previous Naughty Dog games, according to a person who said they were familiar with the hack. Kotaku It has confirmed some of the details with a second source that is familiar with the structure of the games from development studio Naughty Dog.
The details of the apparent hack were first shared on Twitter on Saturday night by a person by the name of Pixelbutts, who then produced a direct message about how the exploit was discovered. He refused to share his real name.
He described a sequence of events that started in January. That was when, he says, a group of hackers discovered a method of accessing Amazon’s servers for Naughty Dog games using what was essentially password information included in the code for the studio games, including those from 2011. Unexplored 3 and 2013 the The last of us. Those games access servers for multiplayer functionality, but apparently they could also be used to recover files stored there.
“The UC3 key provided them with UC3 development material, and the UC2 key did the same thing, but there was some TLOU1 content mixed in on the UC3 server,” Pixelbutts said. “It was not too difficult to think that the TLOU1 server would have TLOU2 material.”
In March, he said, the group took at least one terabyte of data from the part of the server associated with The last of us.
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That timeline follows what leaked from the highly anticipated and exclusive PS4 exclusive. At least one of the pivotal scenes that messed up the plot that was posted online by the filter included a developer code that identified the images as from an April 1 version of the game. While the leak also included game footage, it’s unclear whether the hackers could have obtained a playable version of the game instead of the game footage recorded by Naughty Dog and saved on the studio’s servers.
Pixelbutts claims to have notified Naughty Dog of the security flaw in February, and also says that it did not participate in the hack or obtain any of the leaked materials.
He said Kotaku today that the key to access Amazon’s servers was changed on or before April 30, closing the apparent hole that allowed the leak.
A representative for Sony PlayStation did not respond to KotakuRequest for comments on this account.
This morning, though, ex always trustworthy Kotaku news editor Jason Schreier reported that the leak was indeed a trick, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter, as well as conversations with Naughty Dog employees. Our own second source also corroborated some of these details.
What is less clear is who carried out the leak and why. Pixelbutts said it does not believe the group of hackers who discovered the feat in January perpetuated the Naughty Dog leak. Last of us 2 material. “His circle is more ND enthusiasts who like the development content of his games, rather than malicious actors,” he said. However, he believes that someone who realized the feat, possibly through that group, posted the material.
The big leak occurred a week ago and quickly sparked rumors that it was the action of a disgruntled employee, perhaps one angered by the study’s controversy. crunchy culture. Those rumors were soon reported as fact by some gaming news outlets and on forums and social media, but the leak doesn’t appear to have included that claim. The leak managed to ruin many plot points that were meant to be kept secret, and the release of images showing what follows for the characters in the series angered many players who wanted to start the game intact. It also clearly infuriated the developers of Naughty Dog, who had managed to keep the details of their characters’ second virtual stay in a post-disaster United States secret.
On Friday, a Sony representative told him Kotaku that the company had identified the “primary individuals” responsible for the leak and noted that those individuals were not current or former employees or contractors. That shot holes in the disgruntled employee theory. According to Sony’s claim, it would be a scenario where leaked files were obtained through hacking and posted online by a stranger, but all based on a vulnerability of a vulnerability that Naughty Dog didn’t know or didn’t know about. hoped it could lead to disaster
“Don’t believe what sounds like the juiciest story, even if it’s what you want to hear,” Pixelbutts wrote on Twitter today. “Sometimes it’s really that boring. Hackerman exploits a vulnerability created by the company’s own games to gain internal access.”
If Naughty Dog had detected any intrusion in the past few weeks, certainly the rush to end the game and the stress of switching to work from home due to covid-19 would have left the team in the worst position to stop it. And if they managed to plug that hole before April 30, they were simply too late.
After an extraordinarily dramatic cycle of development, The last of us part II It will finally launch next month on June 19.
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