Stolen Fortnite Accounts Earn Hackers Millions Per Year

silversurfer

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Hackers are scoring more than a million dollars annually selling compromised accounts for the popular Fortnite video game in underground forums.

With Fortnite’s immense popularity skyrocketing over the past few years – it currently has more than 350 million global players – the game is a lucrative target for cybercriminals. So lucrative, in fact, that 2 billion breached accounts have gone up for sale in underground forums so far in 2020 alone, according to a new report.

After tallying the auction sales for several high-end and low-end Fortnite account sellers over a three month period, researchers found that on the high end, sellers averaged $25,000 per week in account sales — roughly $1.2 million per year.

“The market for stolen account sales is much larger than just the gaming industry… However, from our research, the black market for the buying and selling of stolen Fortnite accounts is among the most expansive, and also the most lucrative,” said researchers with Night Lion Security in a report last week.

The value of a hacked Fortnite account is centralized around a character’s in-game “skin” (essentially a digital costume), researchers said. Players of the game can purchase these in-game accessories using Fortnite’s currency, called V-Bucks. Some of the skins are rare and worth a lot of money; for instance, the “Recon Expert” skin is one of the most valuable, averaging roughly $2,500 per account.
Full report by researchers to download as PDF
 
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