Teenagers are making thousands of pounds a week as part of a global hacking network built around the popular game Fortnite.
It has recently been revealed that people as young as 14 are hacking other players accounts and selling them for money online. Fortnite is free to play but is estimated to have made more than £1bn through the sale of “skins”, which change the look of a character, and other add-ons.This fuels a growing black market. Hackers can sell player accounts for as little as 25p or hundreds of pounds, depending on what they contain.
One British hacker said he got involved at the age of 14 earlier this summer, when he himself became the victim of a hack. Speaking to the BBC from his bedroom via a video chat, wearing a baseball cap and bandanna to hide his identity, the teenager said he had spent about £50 of his pocket money to build up a collection of skins, when he had woken up to a message that revealed he had been hacked. “The email said that my password had been changed and two-factor authentication had been added by someone else. It felt horrible,” he recalled.
Fortnite and security experts recommend you enable two factor authentication on your account, because even hackers themselves say it is near impossible to hack an account when it is enabled.
