EA: FUT Accounts Could Be Hacked Due to Human Error

According to the company, EA’s customer service was tricked through phishing techniques that allowed the takeover of some highly-ranked Fifa Ultimate Team accounts. EA claims that the hackers took advantage of a human error of judgment and promises to get better.

In the press release, EA confirms that several dozen highly ranked Fifa Ultimate Team accounts were recently taken over by malicious parties. The company did not report how many accounts were affected. EA states that the attackers were able to exploit a human error of judgment in the customer experience team through phishing techniques. In this way, they gained unauthorized access to the FUT accounts, which allowed them to steal, among other things, the in-game currency, FUT Coins.

“We currently suspect that fewer than 50 accounts were acquired in this way,” the company said. “We are working hard to identify the rightful owners and give them back access to their accounts and their contents. The investigation into this incident is still ongoing,” EA said.

In early January, the owners of some highly-ranked Fifa Ultimate Team accounts took to Twitter to announce that their profiles had been taken over and they could no longer access them. According to Eurogamer, this was due to hackers who knocked on the door of EA customer service with the gamertags of the accounts, then claimed they were the rightful owners of those accounts, but no longer had access to them. This gave some hackers the option to change the credentials of the accounts and log in.

EA says it is taking steps to avoid similar incidents in the future. The company will train its staff to become better at recognizing phishing techniques. Additional security measures would be put in place during the account verification process and the customer service software would also receive an update that would make suspicious activity around an account more likely to be detected.