Titanfall 2 allegedly hacked via “simple exploit”

Popular first-person shooter Titanfall 2 is rumored to have a severe security vulnerability that has been exploited.

Reports of the game being hacked started circulating on Twitter after Titanfall 2 community members, including Leon Benkovic, were seen urging players to uninstall the game:

Several members of the Titanfall 2 community incl. @DirectXeon are reporting that Titanfall 2 is currently massively compromised.

If you own Titanfall 2 on PC, *DO NOT* launch the game. Uninstall it for now until a fix is released. pic.twitter.com/lNZGbufOL1

— Wicked Good Gaming (@WickedGoodGames) September 8, 2021

Gamers allege that the vulnerability lets attackers gain local code execution abilities from developer Respawn’s servers. The alleged exploit reportedly affects Titanfall 2 players on all platforms—Windows, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Until more information is disclosed and the reported vulnerability is squashed, community members suggest removing the game as a safeguard.

Respawn believes it’s a “simple exploit”

“We are aware of reports of a security vulnerability affecting Titanfall 2 and are investigating. We have no other information to share at the moment but will update once we do,” said Respawn a few hours ago. The latest update from the game developer as of publication time suggests “that we’re dealing with a simple exploit that can be used to crash games,” Respawn said.

An Update: We’re still investigating this issue but our engineers believe that we’re dealing with a simple exploit that can be used to crash games.

We do not believe there are any more serious risks to affected players or their machines.

We’ll update again as we learn more.

— Respawn (@Respawn) September 9, 2021

As such, Respawn does not believe that the exploit poses serious risks to affected players and their machines and is continuing its investigation.

Hack me twice, shame on me!

This isn’t the first time Respawn’s games have been subject to reports of hacking.

Both the original Titanfall and Apex Legends, also developed by Respawn, experienced a series of attacks earlier this year from game fans and adversaries alike. In July, Apex Legends was hacked by Titanfall fans to pressure the game developer into reviving a Titanfall spin-off that the developer canceled. In May, both Titanfall and Titanfall 2 battled a series of DDoS attacks in which attackers “blacklisted” many players, making them unable to join the game. DDoS attacks have been an ongoing problem for Titanfall over the past few years.

A user shared a screenshot from a Discord chat offering a hypothesis on the issue:

However, a Reddit user cautioned players against jumping to conclusions, as there is no concrete evidence authoritatively proving Titanfall 2 was hacked.

“You are all panicking over a tweet of a screenshot of a discord post claiming the existence of a zero-day multi-platform [Remote Code Execution (RCE)] in a moderately popular game,” said Redditor scalyblue. “This claim comes, without evidence, with very questionable details (an RCE that writes to random memory that is extant on all implementations of the game? yeah. sure.) from parties that are neither established security researchers nor members of the development team.”

“I repeat. There is no POC, there is no provided evidence, no whitepaper, no nothing. You have a screenshot… Of a discord post,” the post said.

Ars has reached out to both EA and Respawn with specific questions and is awaiting responses. We are monitoring developments and will update this story as new information emerges.