The victims, Genburton from team DarkZero and ImperialHal from Team SoloMid (TSM) had been live-streaming their gameplay to Twitch when the incident occurred. — Electronic Arts
The regional finals of the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) have been postponed indefinitely, following an incident where two players fell victim to a hack partway through the match.
The two players, Genburton from team DarkZero and ImperialHal from Team SoloMid (TSM), had been live-streaming their gameplay to Twitch when the incident occurred.
In Genburton's case, his game appeared to have been hijacked and a wallhack (a cheat giving a player the ability to see through walls) was enabled.
In a Twitch clip of the livestream, he then took his hands off the controls as his character continued to move on its own. The round was then reset by tournament administrators.
It was a similar case for ImperialHal in the next round, with his controls hijacked but instead of a wallhack, he was given an aimbot (a cheat that automatically aims and shoots for players).
Like the earlier match, this round was abandoned.
The malicious actor also sent a message reading "Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom" to the match lobby's chat using the compromised player's accounts.
After the two incidents, ALGS organisers postponed the remainder of the series, stating the "due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised, we have made the decision to postpone the NA (North American) finals at this time," via its X (formerly Twitter) page.
The organisers added that they would share further information soon.
The Anti-Cheat Police Department, a volunteer group specialising in intelligence gathering on cheat software and the disruption of cheat vendors, reported that there is a remote code execution (RCE) exploit in the anti-cheat software used by Apex Legends.
It wrote on X that the RCE exploit allows malicious actors to inject cheats into the machines of other players, and has been used to attack several streamers.
The volunteer group further recommends against playing any title that shares the same anti-cheat software as Apex Legends until the exploit is fixed.
It is currently unclear if the threat actors behind the ALGS incident had utilised this exploit in the attack.
