Supercell Hacker: They Ignored Me, "So I Gave Them a Lesson"

A Syrian hacker who claims to have hacked into Supercell’s Facebook pages and administrator panel says he/she did it to teach the games company a lesson.

Supercell has confirmed in public posts on Facebook and Twitter that the Facebook pages for its hit games Clash of Clans and Hay Day were indeed “hacked.” Company representatives did not respond to an inquiry about the juicier half of the hacker’s offerings: Screenshots of internal audience and revenue numbers.

Those alleged numbers include 29.4 million daily active users on Feb. 7 and $5.15 million in revenue that day, though it’s not clear if that number is just for Clash of Clans or the company as a whole. The hacker, who goes by the online pseudonym Ethical Spectrum, also provided to Re/code the following screenshot of another daily metrics chart, noting 11.6 million players for an unspecified mobile game worldwide and $1.49 million in revenue that day.

Ethical Spectrum declined to explain how he/she allegedly broke into the company’s metrics, but claimed in an email that Supercell had a chance to stop it.

“I tried to give them the advice of security, but [they] did not give me any attention,” Ethical Spectrum wrote in an email. “So I gave them a lesson. … Before I hack them, I found their CEO email address.”

“No respond = hack,” he/she added.

Even if Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen did receive and ignore an email from Ethical Spectrum, it’s worth noting that the company offers a more general contact email on its website’s Contact Us page.

Polygon reports that the pages were accessed through a social media management tool called Engagor. Update: Engagor CEO Folke Lemaitre emailed the following statement to Re/code with an explanation:

On February 10th, an unauthorized individual gained access to one of Supercell’s employee’s e-mail account. This e-mail account was subsequently used to gain access to several private sources of information. One of these is the Engagor app, which Supercell uses to manage it’s Facebook page. … Supercell acted quickly on this breach of security and informed Engagor. Engagor responded within minutes by closing down access to the account. At no time Engagor’s security as such was breached.

Lemaitre’s statement suggests that the metrics panel those audience and revenue numbers came from was likely one of the “several private sources of information” connected to the compromised email address.

Via a tweet, Ethical Spectrum denied having had access to Supercell players’ credit card information. The hacker’s Twitter also offers up an entertaining footnote: After choosing to go after a free-to-play game developer, Ethical Spectrum now claims to be inundated with emails begging for virtual currency:

https://twitter.com/Eth_Spectrum/status/432774115309531136

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via