Former Dota 2 Pro Player Ghostik Steam Account Allegedly Hacked by Russians

On 17^th March, Sunday former Dota 2 pro, Andrii "Ghostik" Kadyk reported that his Steam account had been compromised by hackers and most of his treasured in-game items were traded off from his account.

Ghostik, who last played for Team Empire, took to Telegram to reveal the sticky situation he was in, to all his fans and followers. Ghostik claimed that the hackers were based out of Russia and revealed that some of the items he lost included artifacts from almost a decade ago that would most likely never be recovered.

Since then, a fundraiser with a goal of 500,000 Ukrainian hryvnia (~ $12,884 USD) has been started to help Ghostik cover his losses.

Ghostik’s Steam Account Possibly Hacked by Russians: Loses Most Dota 2 Items

In the world of gaming, cosmetics have become a rather important part of the whole experience, be it to show off new items to your friends or collect items as a collector, everyone has their personal preferences.

However, everyone dreads the fact that hackers are constantly on the verge of seeking new targets to loot. Former professional Dota 2 player, Ghostik met his fateful day on 17th March as he wrote on Telegram, “Russians have hacked into (my) Steam (Account).”

Although there is no concrete proof that the hackers were Russians, it is possible Ghostik surmised this due to the update on his Steam profile.

Ghostik further revealed the details of his misfortune and claimed that the hackers had plundered his armory, trading most of his costly and prized Dota 2 items which included sets and items for heroes like - Queen of Pain, Legion Commander, Slardar, and Doom amongst many others.

He accepted the fact that his items were gone for good and had to swallow the hard pill but he grieved a lot more for the lost artifacts that were in his possession for over a decade. Following this, a fundraiser was set up to help him out with a goal of 500,000 Ukrainian hryvnia (~ $12,884), of which 163,031 Ukrainian hryvnia (~$4,200) have already been collected.

How Hackers Possibly Gained Access to Ghostik’s Steam Account?

On 18^th March, Monday Ghostik delved into the root cause behind his account’s compromise and stumbled upon a blog post from Avast, a popular computer security company, that shed light on an exploit regarding the V8 Bug.

The crux of the post was that some custom games in Dota 2 had outdated code that hackers could alter and basically access your Steam account as a whole. Upon further inspection, Ghostik found that he was indeed the victim of this very exploit and was subscribed to over 700 custom games when he recovered his account.

This deadly exploit could be a problem for the Dota 2 community as potentially hundreds of thousands of Dota 2 players might be at risk of facing a similar fate as Ghostik. At the time of writing, Valve has made no announcement so far to address this issue but meanwhile, you can unsubscribe to all the old custom games from your library to keep yourself safe from this exploit.