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Last week, the video game giant Riot Games revealed<\/a> that hackers had compromised its \u201cdevelopment environment\u201d\u2014 where the company stores its source code \u2014 with a social engineering attack.<\/p>\n While the company reassured its users that \u201cthere is no indication that player data or personal information was obtained,\u201d the hack could still be damaging, as hackers got their hands on the source code for Riot\u2019s popular games League of Legends<\/em> and Teamfight Tactics<\/em>, as well as the source code for the company\u2019s legacy anti-cheat system.<\/p>\n The theft of the anti-cheat\u2019s source code \u2014 even an old system \u2014 could help hackers develop better and less detectable cheats, according to industry experts who spoke to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom Riot\u2019s perspective it\u2019s bad (beyond just embarrassing) because it makes it easier for cheat developers to understand the game and therefore easier to develop new cheats, it also makes it easier for third party league servers\/clients to get made,\u201d Paul Chamberlain, who led Riot\u2019s anti-cheat team until September 2020, told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n Chamberlain said that the legacy anti-cheat hasn\u2019t been part of League of Legends for five years, but given that developing cheats is \u201cis as much (perhaps more) about the game itself than the anti-cheat system, having access to the game source code means you don\u2019t have to reverse engineer the released binaries (which are often also obfuscated or encrypted) and gives cheat developers better access to the intent of the game code through comments and variable\/function\/class names.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAccess to an obsolete anti-cheat system is mostly a curiosity but it could give some insight into how the anti-cheat developers think and what the company prioritizes in terms of what needs protection,\u201d Chamberlain explained.<\/p>\n