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October 8, 2015

Fifa YouTube gamers tackled by hackers

News: Hackers posed as players to stole Fifa coins.

By CBR Staff Writer

Cyber thieves have targeted six successful Fifa video gamers who all feature on YouTube and collectively have more than five million YouTube subscribers.

YouTubers AnesonGib, W2S, Nepenthez, Nick28T, Bateson87 and matthdgamer are amongst the 10 individuals who were targeted by the hackers.

The hackers stole millions of in-game currency, Fifa coins, deleted valuable players, and some players were even sold in the game’s Ultimate Team mode.

EA Sports is the creator of Fifa, and the hackers reportedly called Fifa’s publisher and developer posing as the gamers in an attempt to get their EA Origins accounts transferred to an email address that belonged to the hackers.

The BBC cited matthdgamer or Matthew Craig as saying: "There have been about 10 or more accounts which have been hacked over the last two weeks, me included."

"It’s most likely they just went on the leaderboards and found the ones with the best Ultimate Team Clubs and targeted us that way."

Craig said that valuable players, like Ronaldo, have been discarded, with Ronaldo worth 3.4 million of the games virtual coins which is worth about £800.

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The Fifa series’ Ultimate Team mode is one of the most popular series, and it can be played by building a squad through the playing and the acquisition of Fifa coins.

Fifa Coins can be used to buy packs of cards consisting of new players and bonuses or purchase players outright in the transfer market. Users can also Fifa coins with real money.

Fifa is not the first game to be targeted by hackers, as last year during the Christmas Day cyber attack on Playstation and XBox games consoles were hacked leaving them useless.

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