Rockstar confirms hack: ransom demand threats issued 'Pay or Leak'

A notorious hacking group called ShinyHunters has posted a ransom note for data acquired from Rockstar Games, writing to the Grand Theft Auto 6 developer, "Pay or leak."

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The hacking group posted an update on April 11 claiming it had infiltrated Rockstar Games and other companies, including Hallmark Cards, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, and McGraw-Hill. ShinyHunters reported that Rockstar Games' cloud platform, Snowflake, had been compromised, a claim backed by a Snowflake statement confirming that it had detected unusual activity in a small number of Snowflake customer accounts linked to third-party integrations.

Snowflake wrote that it immediately launched an investigation, and out of an abundance of caution, it locked down potentially impacted customer accounts. Furthermore, Snowflake said it has contacted impacted customers and provided advice on how to further protect their accounts. Additionally, Snowflake confirmed that the third-party integration was with the analytics firm Anodot, for which reports indicate that ShinyHunters stole an authentication tokens from Anodot, which was then used to attack Snowflake customers.

As for Rockstar, the developer has acknowledged the attack and seemingly downplayed its severity. In a statement, the GTA 6 developer wrote, "We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach. This incident has no impact on our organization or our players."

Lastly, Rockstar is currently going through a fat trimming process of GTA 6, and if you are interested in reading more on that story, check out the details from a former Rockstar developer below.