Cyberattacks have become increasingly common over the past few years. It was recently reported that hackers stole the source code of Electronic Arts’ (EA) game FIFA 21. It has now come to light that hackers have released the code on the dark web.

As reported by The Record, the data leak first came to light back on June 10 as hackers posted a threat on a hacking forum on dark web claiming that they possess EA data. Hackers were earlier selling the data for $28 million, however, they couldn’t find any buyers for the data as other cybercriminals didn’t show interest in the stolen source code. Because of this, hackers decided to blackmail EA with the theft of source code.

The report states that Hackers asked the company for $28 million (about ₹207 crore) for the stolen code which amounted to about 780GB of data. The leaked data reportedly contains the source code of the FIFA 21 soccer game as well as the tools that support the company’s server-side services.

However, EA refused to pay the ransom to the hackers, which is why they dumped the stolen data on an underground cybercrime forum on Monday, July 26. This data is now being distributed on Torrent websites.

“Following the incident, we’ve already made security improvements and do not expect an impact on our games or our business,” an EA spokesperson told The Record. “We are actively working with law enforcement officials and other experts as part of this ongoing criminal investigation.” As per the reports, hackers had stolen the data by accessing EA’s internal Slack channels via unauthorized tricks. They then managed to download over 780GB of source code from the EA’s internal code repositories.