New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….
Original story (published on September 21, 2022) follows:
ARK: Survival Evolved is one of the most popular games in the adventure, looting and survival genre.
ARK challenges the player to survive in inhospitable environments full of dangers. They will have to deal with natural threats, wildlife as well as keep track of their own character’s health.
The game is available on multiple consoles and platforms (Windows, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch). However, some players have been affected by a serious vulnerability.
According to multiple reports, the accounts and tribes of many ARK: Survival Evolved players on Xbox and Windows 10 have been hacked and stolen.
ARK: Survival Evolved accounts hacked & tribes stolen on Xbox & Windows 10
Social platforms like Twitter are full of reports related to the issue. Apparently, the vulnerability resulted in the loss of many gamers’ accounts, along with their tribes and resources.
Apparently, the exploit has been affecting PC players for weeks now. But in the last few hours, Xbox players have also been affected, so the scope of the exploit has increased significantly.
Malicious players were taking advantage of the Xbox and PC crossplay feature to activate the exploit. This explains why PlayStation and Nintendo Switch players accounts are not at risk.
Explanation of the exploit & official word
Those who took advantage of the exploit used the ‘spoofing’ method which consists of the following:
Once the scope of the bug became massive, ARK devs completely disabled the connection for Windows 10 players while they mitigate or resolve it.
Xbox players can still play as the Xbox Live connection remains active. This is because the exploit necessarily required the use of a Windows 10 PC together with an Xbox console.
So, since Windows 10 gamers are currently unable to access the ARK network, Xbox players now should be able to access the game safely.
We will be monitoring the situation to update this story as events unfold.
Update 1 (Sept. 22, 2022)
05:35 pm (IST): ARK: Survival Evolved devs have issued a statement saying that the vulnerability was so severe that they’ll have to do a general data rollback to fix it.
This means that the progress that players made on Xbox and Windows after September 19 will be lost. Here’s the full statement:
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