Marvel’s Wolverine Hacked And Leaked Along With Other Future Projects
Marvel’s Wolverine video game is the subject of a recent leak at the hands of the ransomware group Rhysidia. The hackers breached Insomniac, a subsidiary of Sony, on December 12 and threatened to leak the 1.67 terabytes of confidential data if their demand for 50BTC (roughly $2 million) wasn’t met. Making good on their threat, Rhysidia leaked over 1.3 million files to the public.
In other words, we’re not just dealing with a Wolverine leak but a massive data breach that includes staff information, contracts signed by both Marvel and Sony and a number of future games that Insomniac is currently developing. And we’re not just talking about intellectual properties that are coming out anytime soon, as the leak covers titles that likely wouldn’t materialize until 2035.
Though a number of titles are still in the development phases, the Wolverine leak is damning because of the sheer amount of information that was made available when it was published. Included in the leak were previously unannounced characters, casting information, the game’s plot, a list of locations, as well as the game’s target release date. Early footage of the upcoming Wolverine game was also leaked.
X-Men related titles like Wolverine, as well as titles like Venom, Spider-Man 3, a new unnamed intellectual property, and Insomniac’s future multiplayer aspirations were included in the leak. Reports indicate that the upcoming Venom game will be entitled Venom: Lethal Protector, and serve as a launching point for Spider-Man 3.
Woverine’s budget, as well as the multiple other X-Men games, also had their financial information leaked. All X-Men games are budgeted at $120 million each, with $30 million earmarked for marketing initiatives.
A spokesperson from Rhysidia stated that Insomniac, like other game developers, was an easy target and that they only needed 25 minutes to gain control of the network. They went on to say that the data breach was executed strictly for financial gain. Since Wolverine and every other bit of confidential information they could get their hands on has already been made public through the leak, neither Sony nor Rhysidia have made further statements.
Sony did, however, make a statement when the data breach was first executed, stating that no other divisions were targeted. But since they didn’t pay out the ransom ahead of the Wolverine leak, there’s no telling what Rhysidia has planned next.
If Rhysidia is seeking a hefty financial payout, and their demands weren’t met ahead of the Wolverine leak, there are two possible outcomes. The first outcome is that they acknowledge that the damage has already been done and move on to different targets. The second outcome would involve doubling down and targeting other divisions with the hopes that they can cash in on their hacking efforts now that it’s known that they’re not fooling around.
As of this writing, it remains to be seen how Sony and Insomniac will handle the Wolverine leak, as well as the leak of every other upcoming title on their release slate. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, it really depends on how far along they are in the development process for every single intellectual property that was released through the data breach. It wouldn’t make financial sense to scrap the projects, but this is still a massive setback, especially if Rhysidia is looking to continue committing cyber crimes of this scale and scope.
Source: Cyber Daily
