Sony investigating potential ransomware attack against Insomniac Games unit

Sony said it was investigating reports of a ransomware attack against its subsidiary Insomniac Games, the studio behind popular titles like Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon and more.

Tuesday, the Rhysida ransomware gang claims having attacked Insomniac Games, giving the video game developer six days to respond to its undisclosed ransom demand.

In a statement to Recorded Future News, a spokesperson for Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) said it was aware of reports that “Insomniac Games was the victim of a cybersecurity attack.”

“We are currently investigating this situation,” they said. “We have no reason to believe that other divisions of SIE or Sony have been affected.”

The Rhysida ransomware gang – named after centipedes – is the first emerged late May 2023 and has already claimed major attacks against government institutions in Portugal, Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Chile and the Caribbean island of Martinique.

The gang made headlines in the United States for its devastating attack on Prospect Medical Holdings – which operates 16 hospitals in several states and was forced to reroute ambulances following the incident.

In November, major U.S. cybersecurity agencies issued a advisory on the gang’s operations, warning that it has “primarily been deployed against the education, healthcare, manufacturing, information technology and government sectors since May 2023.” The advisory cites several cybersecurity reports linking the gang to another ransomware operation named Vice Society.

Insomniac Games would be far from the first game studio to face attacks in recent years, with dozens of the biggest game makers facing ransomware incidents and more.

Gaming giants like Rock star, Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Red Project CD And Riot games have each faced cybersecurity incidents in the past three years. Ubisoft and Crytek were hit by the Egregor ransomware gang in 2020.

In 2021, cyberattackers have started sell access to Electronic Arts games and servers after a hack. A hacker degraded the in-game interface of Apex Legends in June 2021 and the French video game manufacturer Ubisoft said in December that a misconfiguration of its IT infrastructure exposed player data from its Just Dance video game series.

Jonathan Greig is a breaking news reporter at Recorded Future News. Jonathan has worked as a journalist around the world since 2014. Before returning to New York, he worked for media outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.