Hacker who stole $6 million in CSGO skins identified by CS.MONEY
CSMONEYCS:GO skin trading website CS.MONEY has provided an update on the major hack that saw countless valuable in-game items stolen, confirming that they have identified the hacker, the method used, and recovered half of the stolen items.
Weapon skins, knives, and other items like stickers, gloves and cases in CS:GO can fetch some eye-watering prices, with a market worth in the hundreds of millions.
In order to exchange items for real-world currency, skin traders and investors must use third-party websites, such as CS.MONEY. Although the world of skin trading has been cleaned up considerably since the wild-west of 2014-18, there are still risks involved.
Thankfully, CS.MONEY has provided a promising update on the status of the stolen items, as well as the nature of the hack and its culprit.
CS.MONEY returning stolen skins after hack
On August 12, a breach of CS.MONEY’s platform led to an estimated $6 million worth (according to CS.MONEY) of items being stolen. Quickly after the hack took place, the majority of skin trading websites blocked any of the stolen items from being listed on their platforms.
On August 22, Timofey Sobolevsky, the Chief Communications Officer at EX CORP, the parent of CS.MONEY, confirmed that half of the stolen items had been recovered.
“We have managed to return half of the stolen skins back to our accounts,” he wrote. “Which means that in less than a week, once the trade lock on them expires, these skins, ours and user-owned alike, will again become available on our site.”
While CS.MONEY will endeavor to retrieve everything that was stolen, any items that are not recovered will be subject to compensation.
“However, we can already tell you that we have found the one who hacked us,” Sobolevsky continued, “and we’ve learned how exactly it was done. While we were at it, we regained control over the accounts used to store the stolen skins.”
EX CORP had offered $100,000 to anyone who could assist “in understanding how exactly the perpetrators accessed our MA files.”
Now that the method used is known, it will be shared with other skin trading websites to prevent similar future attacks.