Month: January 2023

Enlarge / The theft of Riot Games' source code for League of Legends, TeamFight Tactics, and an anti-cheat platform could have implications for future cheats and exploits. (credit: Riot Games)

Riot Games has confirmed that an attack on its development environment last week included the theft of source code for its League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics games, along with a "legacy anticheat platform." The company has received a ransom demand but states that it will not pay.

The release of source code by the attackers, whether publicly or by sale, could have implications for cheat software, providing direct knowledge of the game's mechanisms rather than relying on reverse engineering. Riot acknowledged that the attack, attributed to "social engineering," "could cause issues in the future," but added that it was confident "no player data or player personal information was compromised."

"Truthfully, any exposure of source code can increase the likelihood of new cheats emerging," Riot posted in a reply tweet. "Since the attack, we've been working to assess its impact on anticheat and to be prepared to deploy fixes as quickly as possible if needed." Riot added that the code "includes a number of experimental features," though it's mostly "in prototype and there's no guarantee it will ever be released."

Enlarge / The theft of Riot Games' source code for League of Legends, TeamFight Tactics, and an anti-cheat platform could have implications for future cheats and exploits. (credit: Riot Games)

Riot Games has confirmed that an attack on its development environment last week included the theft of source code for its League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics games, along with a "legacy anticheat platform." The company has received a ransom demand but states that it will not pay.

The release of source code by the attackers, whether publicly or by sale, could have implications for cheat software, providing direct knowledge of the game's mechanisms rather than relying on reverse engineering. Riot acknowledged that the attack, attributed to "social engineering," "could cause issues in the future," but added that it was confident "no player data or player personal information was compromised."

"Truthfully, any exposure of source code can increase the likelihood of new cheats emerging," Riot posted in a reply tweet. "Since the attack, we've been working to assess its impact on anticheat and to be prepared to deploy fixes as quickly as possible if needed." Riot added that the code "includes a number of experimental features," though it's mostly "in prototype and there's no guarantee it will ever be released."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

After years of insisting that truck buyers are demanding larger and larger vehicles, automakers have seen the light and understand that many people want smaller, more efficient pickups. Maybe.

Hot on the heels of the explosive sales of the Ford Maverick and the relatively good sales of the Hyundai Santa Cruz, GM seems to have caught “small trucks with efficient powertrains” fever. Well, at least the designers have come down with that rare—and hopefully incurable—condition.

During a tour of GM’s design center in Warren, Michigan, the automaker gave Ars Technica a peek into its thoughts about future EVs.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | pagadesign)

Google is ending a pilot program that let political emails bypass the Gmail spam filter, and it says it hasn't decided whether to convert the pilot into a more long-term option for political campaigns. The Republican National Committee (RNC) sued Google in October 2022 over its spam-filtering practices but never participated in the pilot program, Google said Monday in a motion to dismiss the RNC's lawsuit.

"The Pilot Program was made available to all eligible participants on a non-partisan basis" and "is scheduled to run through January 31, 2023," Google's court filing said.

The Federal Election Commission approved Google's pilot program in August 2022 amid Republican claims of Google bias. "As the Complaint makes clear, the RNC has chosen not to participate in Google's FEC-approved Pilot Program," Google's motion to dismiss said.