One of the most popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin trading sites, CS.MONEY, lost around $1.6 million worth of in-game items to a hacker attack, as reported by several experts in the field before the information was officially confirmed.
CS.MONEY on your knees
Counter-Strike is well known for being one of the most popular esports games in the world, but also for its parallel market of skins, some of which can reach insane sums. On various unofficial platforms players can buy, sell and exchange cosmetics which can allow them, as we have seen recently, to buy a BMW M5. Indeed some skins have been valued at astronomical amounts, we can mention one of the most sought after the AWP | Dragon Lore (Tradition des Dragons) whose price varies between 10,000 and 20,000 dollars per unit. Another example, more linked to France this time, the stickers of the tricolor team Titan dating from the Major of Katowice in 2014 can be sold for more than 50,000 euros each in their holographic version, or even the knife Karambit Case Hardened in 387 finish which was recently estimated at more than one million euros even if, for the time being, this unique model has not found a buyer, its owner asking for much more.
And this market, if it allows certain specialists to make a living from it, is also a gold mine for a whole host of companies that have built their model on the sale, purchase and exchange of these skins. One of them is called CS.MONEY, it is not one of the biggest like BUFF163, SkinBaron or BitSkins, but still occupies a good place in the top 10 of the most popular platforms. However, a few days ago, CS.MONEY was the object of an attack by computer hackers which allowed them to get their hands on most of the dormant catalog located on CS.MONEY’s servers and managed by their bots. Once this first step was successful, the bots in question took care of the rest in order to empty the inventory but also, later, to send sales offers at unbeatable prices to the biggest collectors, while using CS.MONEY’s competitors in such a way as to cover their tracks. It was from that moment that the case was made public, some denouncing these actions on social networks seeing in this impressive wave of offers something fishy.
CS.MONEY has confirmed that it was hit by a large-scale computer attack which lasted only a few hours on the night of August 13, 2022. However, its effects will have been devastating, according to the site administrators the amount of damage amounts to to more than 6 million dollars and since then they have been obliged to completely close their service as well as to put their site to sleep while they find a solution and above all to prevent the leak from continuing. According to their latest communication, the flaw comes from mobile authentication and, at the time of writing, they have not yet corrected the problem.
Last night we faced the biggest hack in the history of the service. As a result, our bots started sending skins to a large number of users. The attackers were well prepared and tried to inflict maximum damage, which already amounts to millions of dollars.
One fact shows their level of preparation. Along with the hack, they sent small commercial offers to dozens of popular traders and influencers to distract them from ongoing transactions as much as possible.
CS.MONEY – Telegram CYBERSLOVO
Earlier, at the end of June this year, a collector had his CS:GO inventory worth more than $2 million stolen, with the lion’s share of the amount being sold. on the stairs. Valve then intervened directly and returned all or part of the inventory to the stolen owner. This had forced some platforms, such as the site Market.CSGO.com, to issue refunds to their users who had purchased the skins and then lost them following the forced return imposed by the developers.
— CS.MONEY (@csmoneytrade) August 13, 2022