It will be years before “GTA VI” comes onto the market. Now a hacker has stolen material directly from the developers. And shows why secrecy is almost impossible today.

In a typical American diner, the customers’ nightmare has come true. A couple confidently walks the aisles, pointing pistols at employees and guests, and bagging valuables. When the police arrive, they shoot the officials down – and finally roar away in the stolen police car. Anyone who briefly thought of “Pulp Fiction” when hearing the description was certainly not wrong. But the scene is a homage from the not yet released video game “GTA VI”.

There is a good reason why the rather unspectacular game excerpt went viral worldwide within minutes: “GTA VI” is probably the most anticipated video game. And will only appear years in the future. It wasn’t until spring that developer Rockstar made headlines with the game – by simply announcing that they were working on it. Without any execution, that was enough to keep the gaming press and audiences occupied for days.

GTA VI: Not a leak like any other

The fact that one clip after the next from the game is now being published on the GTA Forum fan site is extremely unusual, even in the game scene that is open to leaks. Normally, such material appears just before release, when the press and testers can get their hands on demo material and break non-disclosure agreements. But the “GTA” leak has a completely different dimension: the game documented in the material is clearly still at a stage where a release or even the demonstration of the game is far from being an option.

The reason for this is simple: the material that emerged was never intended for the public, they are clips and photos shared by Rockstar employees among themselves. The hacker responsible for the leak had not hacked into the well-secured network of the game company. But in the chat program of an employee.

Gateway work chat

Like many companies, Rockstar works with modern tools such as the chat program Slack, which is popular with many companies. In addition to chats, the program also offers numerous functions for collaboration, the joint use of documents stored there and the integration of countless other programs. No wonder it has long replaced e-mail and other tools in many companies.

How dangerous this can be is not only shown by the hack at Rockstar. Taxi competitor Uber was also hacked this week via its Slack channel – apparently by the same perpetrator. Getting started at Rockstar seems to have been frighteningly easy. An employee had used the same combination of password and e-mail at another service. After the other access had landed in the network, the attacker was also able to log into Rockstar Slack. And access all the data that had been made available to the employee.

From the start, there was little doubt that the material was genuine. The clips are too detailed and mature. Jason Schreier, known for good contacts in the industry, was first able to confirm from rock star circles that the data is genuine. The developers are “devastated,” revealed his sources. Meanwhile, Rockstar’s official Twitter account has also reported with a message and confirmed the hack and the stolen excerpts as genuine.

Disaster for rock star

The leak is a disaster for the developer studio. It’s less about the hacker’s attempt to blackmail the company with the stolen data. The fact that numerous fans without technical knowledge are loudly upset about how bad the very unfinished game still looks is certainly not nice. However, it can be compensated for with a successful, finished product. The story spoilers, which confirm a female lead for the first time, are also annoying, but rather less harmful. Most excerpts have now been removed from platforms such as YouTube or Twitter anyway.

A real problem is that unfortunately not only clips and photos ended up on the web, but also original program code. This could potentially cause headaches for developers years into the future. Not only can competitors analyze the code to copy certain mechanics or approaches. The code can also be evaluated to find vulnerabilities in it – and exploit them with cheat programs.

The regular “GTA VI” is less of a concern. The company’s real money printing machine has long been the multiplayer mode “GTA Online”. There players can not only steal cars together and shoot at each other. You can also buy benefits with game currency. Rockstar pays well for that. The company is currently taking in almost $80,000 an hour, and since it started in 2013, almost $8 billion has been raised, reports “Tweaktown”, citing the company’s quarterly reports. If hackers were able to quickly copy the digital money or imitate the benefits to be bought in this way, this would severely damage revenue. This danger is not purely hypothetical: for years, the digital currency and services around it have been traded without the consent of the developer.

For other companies, the current hacks mean one thing above all: They are a warning not to rely solely on the security of the tools used when handling classified or otherwise critical material. As long as a single employee is careless, there are no secrets there.

Sources: Twitter, GTA Forums, Tweaktown