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Akamai: Fortnite ransomware scams should force developers and gamers to think about security

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

The game industry has long been a target for cybercriminals, and so it was no surprise in the past couple weeks to see the discovery of ransomware that attacks the accounts of Fortnite players.

Cybersecurity firm Cyren found a free game hack tool, Syrk, that players download as a way to cheat in the game. But they discover it disables malware defenses and then deletes batches of the users’ files and encrypts them. To un-encrypt them, the player has to pay to receive a password.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.