EA Origin hacked: Allows attackers to hijack PCs

**Alundil** · 03-18-13, 04:59 PM

Bug in EA’s Origin game platform allows attackers to hijack player PCs | Ars Technica

The attack, demonstrated on Friday at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, takes just seconds to execute. In some cases, it requires no interaction by victims, researchers from Malta-based ReVuln (@revuln) told Ars. It works by manipulating the uniform resource identifiers EA's site uses to automatically start games on an end user's machine. By exploiting flaws in the Origin application available for both Macs and PCs, the technique turns EA's popular game store into an attack platform that can covertly install malware on customers' computers.
"The Origin platform allows malicious users to exploit local vulnerabilities or features by abusing the Origin URI handling mechanism," ReVuln researchers Donato Ferrante and Luigi Auriemma wrote in apaper accompanying last week's demonstration. "In other words, an attacker can craft a malicious Internet link to execute malicious code remotely on [a] victim's system, which has Origin installed."

Great.

Always folks, be careful when clicking links.

**BigHub** · 03-18-13, 05:02 PM

::slow clap::

Great job EA. Great job.

**CivilWars** · 03-18-13, 05:17 PM

Shocking...

**dreaddman** · 03-18-13, 05:32 PM

Oh, eff it.

**DJ Ms. White** · 03-18-13, 05:54 PM

Good thing I already beat crysis

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

**deputyfestus** · 03-18-13, 06:00 PM

and gone............don't play ea games anyway's.

**SpiritOfF1re** · 03-18-13, 06:06 PM

Haven't touched Origin since installing BF3 when it came out, lol...I'm glad EA makes it so easy to stay away from their crap.

**N-Ur-Face** · 03-19-13, 12:28 AM

To be fair (and this is coming from someone who hasn't bought anything EA since I got the deal I did on BF3), these sort of things aren't exactly uncommon. These gimongous software applications are bound to have loopholes. Of course the hackers will look through the codes to find what can and can't be exploited.

**Alundil** · 03-19-13, 02:11 AM

Certainly. Which is why my posting of this was not feverish. Simply mind the links you get more than normal, and especially in Origin for the moment.

Sent via highly charged bolt of electricity.