Rockstar Social Club Accounts Hacked and Sold in Online Forums?

This isn’t necessarily confirmed by Rockstar themselves, but our very own Twitch streamer has recently had an issue logging in to his Rockstar Social Club account, it was taken over, and further investigation revealed that the account name and info might have been purchased through an online forum.

Rockstar Social Club accounts might be compromised and then sold in forums.

Beatboxrs, our new partner in streaming, had a very interesting tale to tell regarding his Rockstar Social Club account. Just a few days ago after updating NVIDIA’s drivers, he naturally decided to see just what kind of performance improvements were actually included in the new game ready drivers for GTA V. Logging in was difficult, however, due to a change in password he didn’t authorize. It turns that the email associated wasn’t his, though the awesome Rockstar support was able to assist him nonetheless.

When confronted, it turns out that the owner of that email address stated that the account information was purchased on a discussion board somewhere on the Internet. Eventually the account was actually given back to its rightful owner with no further issues, but it does highlight two issues.

The first is obviously password security. Always make sure you use a unique and complex password that’s long, contains symbols, numbers and even upper-case letters. And where possible, enable two or multi-factor authentication. It’s a necessity these days. Apps like Google’s own Authenticator app are great for managing multiple One Time Password’s linked to multiple accounts. Also, it might not be a bad idea to start using a password manager to manage those passwords. That way the passwords that you can’t possibly remember (unless you have an eidetic memory) are transmitted over the public internet and a slightly more memorable password is used only locally to unlock that manager.

Change your passwords folks, even if it’s not founded, it doesn’t hurt to change em’.

Secondly it might mean that there has been a breach of security at Rockstar, though that might not necessarily be true. So don’t freak out yet, though we’ve reached out but haven’t received a response yet.. What probably happened is a targeted attack on his account due to the relative notoriety that comes from streaming video games. Someone saw him, didn’t like him, and could obviously see his account name and just used some popular tools to gain access in any number of ways.

So if you’re a streamer, be sure to practice good password habits and just be aware that some people may not agree with your play style and might try to do something about it to ruin your day. This type of behavior isn’t new, either. The targeted DDoSing of streamers and the servers they play on is a surprisingly common occurrence, so it’s a natural progression to move on to other types of nefariousness.

Just be careful, have strong passwords, and be mindful of when you get those emails telling you that something might have been hacked. A little common sense goes a long way, though sometimes all the protections in the world won’t stop someone who’s really that determined.