In an interview, the hacker Destroyer2009 took the credit for hacking the tournament and admitted that he did it just for fun.
On March 18, two professional players were hacked mid-game during the North America finals for ALGS 2024 Split 1 Pro League. Phillip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen and Noyan ‘Genburten’ Ozkose, two of the most well-known players in Apex Legends esports, were hacked during one of the matches and had some cheats enabled by the hacker.
Genburten was streaming the tournament matches on Twitch, and while playing the game, he saw a cheat UI appear on his screen. After the hacker enabled wall hacks in his game, Genburten left the game as he feared that he could be banned from future events. ImperialHal received an automated ban from the game after the hacker enabled aimbot on his system.
Following the tournament breach, Respawn Entertainment postponed the event. The developer later stated on Twitter that they are working to prevent something like this from happening again.
Read More: Respawn Confirmed Apex Legends Pros Were Hacked During ALGS Finals Tournament
The Hacker Hacked The Tournament ‘Just For Fun’
While the hacker breached the ALGS tournament mid-game, the game’s chatbot displayed the following messages on-screen: “Apex hacking global series, by Destroyer2009 & R4andom.”
In an interview with Tech Crunch, one of the hackers, Destroyer2009, took credit for the breach and explained that he hacked that tournament and the players ‘just for fun.’ However, the hacker said he did not interact directly with the players’ devices and added that the hack ‘never went outside the game.’
I really don’t want to go into the details until everything is fully patched and everything goes back to normal. [It] has nothing to do with the server and I’ve never touched anything outside of the Apex process.
Just imagine if it wasn’t a joke and we didn’t put any memes in the cheat, I’m pretty sure you can ruin someone’s career if they had a cheat pop up on a tournament.
Destroyer2009 on the ALGS Hack
In the interview, Destroyer2009 stated that he did not notify Respawn about Apex Legends’ vulnerability because the game’s developer and publisher, Electronic Arts, does not offer a bug bounty program that might pay hackers to find security flaws within the game. The hacker also added that they targeted Genburten and ImperialHal specifically because “they’re just nice guys.”
Read More: Everything We Know About Apex Legends Cobalt Katar Heirloom
