Epic Games and Fortnite are not having the best week. First, according to Polygon, the company’s been hit with a class-action lawsuit in North Carolina over a security vulnerability in one of Epic’s Fortnite websites discovered by cybersecurity research firm Check Point late last year.
“Not until two months later did Epic Games acknowledge the flaw,” says the law firm originating the suit, Franklin D. Azar & Associates. “Epic Games did not disclose how many accounts were affected by the data breach.” What Epic did do was automate its account database and enable 2FA. The firm, however, says that’s not enough and is currently seeking more plaintiffs to join the suit.
“[A]ffected Fortnite users have suffered an ascertainable loss in that they have had fraudulent charges made to their credit or debit cards and must undertake additional security measures, some at their own expense, to minimize the risk of future data breaches including cancelling credit cards associated with their Epic Games/Fortnite accounts and changing passwords for those accounts. Furthermore, Fortnite users have no guarantee that the above security measures will in fact adequately protect their personal information. Fortnite users therefore have an ongoing interest in ensuring that their personal information is protected from past and future cybersecurity threats.”
Meanwhile, in other awful Fortnite news, remember the 16-year-old kid who just won Fortnite’s World Cup at the end of July? Yeah, he got swatted while streaming the game. Viewers were treated to confusion on the stream as the poor kid’s dad calls him away when police arrive at their front door, then a few minutes later, he comes back.
“Yeah I got swatted,” he says. “I was lucky cuz the one officer […] lives in our neighborhood. […] They come in with guns, bro. They literally pulled up, holy shit.” Readers will recall that swatting – i.e., calling up the police to report a fake crime at your victim’s residence in the hopes that the police will show up and wreck said victim – has led to fatalities for victims and prison time for perps and isn’t even remotely funny.
