When FIFA professional Daniel "HSV Daniel" Dwelk checks his e-mails on New Year's Eve, a shock awaits him: his Ultimate Team account has suddenly been blocked for the transfer market. In addition, he was missing a million FIFA coins.
It quickly became clear to the e-athlete from Hamburger SV: he is another victim of the current wave of hacking attacks. Especially streamers, e-athletes and traders are affected - that is, people who have put a lot of money into FIFA 22, or have been able to accumulate a lot of coins in their account through skillful trading.
Streamer Trymacs repeatedly hacked
According to the German streamer Maximilian "Trymacs" Stemmler, it hit him twice. According to them, the hackers managed to plunder his entire club. He had already put $26,000 into his account. Trymacs got his coins back from the support, but the company needed a certain processing time for each case.
HSV Daniel is worried about his account. "Now we have been sitting with EA for a week and are in exchange. However, communication with EA support has not been completely optimal so far,"says the e-athlete. If his account was not reactivated, he would no longer be competitive with his remaining team for the rest of the season, he says.
For him, waiting means less time for effective training before the next competition. In addition, it is currently difficult for him to collect points for the next qualifier of the FIFA Global Series. "Of course, this is a danger to my existence, e-sports are very fast-paced. If I don't have any successes this season due to the hack, it will be difficult, "says the 22-year-old.
Even the HSV can not help
In parallel to HSV Daniel's support requests, Hamburger SV tried to help. FIFA coach Nicolas Eleftheriadis was looking for a direct line to EA. In vain, neither through the contact persons of the FIFA Global Series nor through the Virtual Bundesliga could anyone help.
"We feel a little faint right now," says the coach. "Players who earn their living with this, who are present at events, should have a direct contact person for such cases," demands Eleftheriadis.
Customer Service Issues - EA responds
Reports, for example from the British "Mirror", suggest that the problem could lie directly with EA's customer service. Coach Eleftheriadis also shares this suspicion: "My guess is that the hackers are probably approaching support with the Gamertag, saying they no longer have access to their first and second email, and thus manage to have the email address for the account changed," he says.
EA Sports has now responded and seems to confirm the suspicions of the community: "Through threats and other social engineering methods, scammers have managed to exploit human errors within our customer experience team, circumvent two-factor authentication and gain access to other players' accounts," a statement said.
"The security of accounts is always based on human behavior, and we are aware that there is room for improvement." The customer service staff should now be better trained, new security measures would be introduced and the system for detecting suspicious activities improved.
In total, there are about 50 affected accounts. EA apologised for the inconvenience and frustration caused to those affected and announced that it would be contacting them "shortly".
FIFA coins on the black market?
"I could imagine that the coins will end up being sold for money on platforms," says HSV Daniel about what the hackers could do with the captured game content.
The targeted transfer of coins between FUT accounts violates the terms of use, but coins are offered for money on various online platforms. One million of the in-game currency brings about 100 dollars on the black market. On Trymac's account alone, about 80 million coins were on the first hack - that corresponds to a black market value of 8000 dollars.
