Rockstar Games is in another security crisis. On April 11, hacking group ShinyHunters posted a note on its dark web leak site alleging it accessed the GTA 6 developer’s Snowflake database instances. They’ve put a hard deadline in place: come up to speed, or everything will be released.
“A limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach,” said a Rockstar Games spokesperson, adding that the “this incident has no impact on our organization or our players.”
ShinyHunters claims it did not hack Rockstar or its Snowflake data warehouse. It hacked Anodot, a SaaS platform Rockstar is using to monitor its cloud cost and spending anomalies. Using Anodot’s systems, ShinyHunters developed authentication tokens, which are digital credentials that allow one system to talk to another without manually inputting passwords.
To Rockstar’s security team, the activity looked like a legitimate internal monitoring job. ShinyHunters reportedly already had been exporting databases for a while before anyone even noticed.
What are they holding for ransom?
The compromised material may include financial records, player spending data, geographic data, marketing schedules and contracts with Sony, voice actors and music labels. There are no indications that customer passwords or payment information have been compromised.
The breach is seemingly confined to corporate data, according to a statement from Rockstar. The most important point, however, is that the breach seems to be involving corporate data and not leaked game code. The exposure is Rockstar’s plans for marketing GTA 6, not its source code.
The group has been active since 2020. They target third-party integrations and identity systems and APIs. The past six years, they’ve breached Microsoft, Wattpad, AT&T, the European Commission, SoundCloud, Ticketmaster.
They’re not talking nonsense. Earlier this March, the group announced that it had picked up data linked to more than 400 companies on Salesforce and had published the data of 26 of those companies by the time the Rockstar claim came around.
In 2022, 18-year old Arion Kurtaj had hacked the company’s Slack channel and leaked early footage of GTA VI. The UK teen got stuck in a hospital prison for life here and will only be released decades from now if doctors deem him a threat to society.
GTA 6 is set to release on November 19, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. No release date for PC yet. April 14 is almost here, Rockstar what?
