Believe it or not, there’s a huge black market for stolen video game logins, and Fortnite Accounts are part of it.
The immense popularity of Fortnite has exponentially skyrocketed over the past few years, since its debut in 2017. Right now, it has more than 350 million global players.
So you can bet this is beyond lucrative to hackers and cybercriminals.
Do you want to know how lucrative this “business” truly is?
Stolen Fortnite Accounts = Million of Dollars
Before touching up the numbers, I must first tell you the reasons why this happens.
In the first place, Fornite Accounts are sold between $200 to $250 on average, but some might reach the thousands.
Its value relies mostly on the character’s in-game skins (digital costumers) that Fortnite Account has. These accessories are purchasable using Fornite’s currency (V-Bucks) which can only be acquired through real money.
How so? Players can choose to buy between several packs.
The USD pricing levels of V-Bucks are the following:
- 1,000 V-Bucks = $9.99
- 2,500 (+300 Bonus) V-Bucks = $24.99
- 6,000 (+1,500 Bonus) V-Bucks = $59.99
- 10,000 (+3,500 Bonus) V-Bucks = $99.99
So basically, skins are worth real money. And some way more than others, according to its rarity. The “Recon Expert” skin is considered the most valuable skin, worth roughly $2,500.
But here’s the funny part: Skins aren’t the only thing you can “invest” in inside Fortnite.
Other premium items also include Emotes, Gliders, and Harvesting Tools.
Where Are Hacked Fornite Accounts Sold On?
Probably “Fortnite” and “Black Market” are two words that don’t sound good with each other.
So you might be probably asking “where do hackers sell” and “players illegally take advantage of”?
Hacked Fortnite accounts are sold on highly-organized underground marketplaces.
They are run by distributors and resellers. One sells the credentials to the other and finally distributes it to the end-user (consumer).
It doesn’t surprise anyone that in here, resellers also host illegal shops for Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ accounts. What is surprising is that they are easy to find (not the type of stores you find by digging into the dark web).
Besides Fortnite accounts, others hacked from games like Roblox, Minecraft, and RuneScape are also sold here. These 3 add up to $500 million in sales per year.
Resellers use platforms as selly.io, shoppy.gg, and atshop.io. And even have some functional customer services and return policies in place. Plus “Community Checkups”, which are groups of judges who keep track of those sellers and buyers breaking the rules.
How Do Fornite Accounts Get Hacked?
Fortnite accounts are hacked through the use of brute-force and password-cracking tools.
Hackers tend to get login credentials (username and password) from past data breaches, making use of password dumping and stuffing, by checking over 500 accounts per second.
Data breaches from other company’s accounts are valuable because people tend to reuse the login credentials of several others.
Epic Games have a defense layer in place to prevent this from happening, but hackers always find the way.
The company limits the amount logins attempt per IP but hackers bypass this with automatic proxy rotation tools (they can be purchased online for $15 per month or more).
Beyond that, the only weapon that Epic Games has is awareness.
They provide it through followable instructions on their website. And we do it as well through this article.
Take into account that this is not the only security issue Fornite has faced.
In 2018, malicious Android apps were found supporting uncovered camera access, and wipe of device data. In 2019, it was a bug that let in hackers into million of Fortnite accounts, and the “Syrk” ransomware became a hacking tool everyone talked about that same year.