Among Us Hacked
The Eris Loris Mystery
Within the past few days, one of the most popular games currently streaming, Among Us, has been hacked by a mysterious hacker(s) going by the name of Eris Loris. The hacking of the game began last Thursday, October 22nd. Since then, the public game servers have been riddled with spam, connection failures, and broken lobbies as a result of this seemingly random attack.
Players first began to notice an issue with the game when they began logging into completely blank lobbies with only their character visible, a glitch that is not new to the game but was triggered much more frequently by the hacker's attack. Players would often be in the lobby alone however there were also instances of multiple players appearing in the same dark and empty lobby. Even with the darkness, the lobby still displayed all of the usual functions including the ability to start a game if enough people joined.
A screenshot taken of a blacked-out lobby on Among Us mobile.
Once inside these seemingly glitched lobbies, the chat logs began to fill up with spam messages appearing to come from all different gamertags. These messages consisted of advertisements for either the Eris Loris YouTube channel or for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign. These messages began filling the chat and after some time also began to include a link to a discord server. Many people who were in lobbies by themselves also claimed to have experienced the messages even though they were the only player in the lobby. The messages were not said to have contained any hate speech or vulgar language however they did threaten to hack anyone's personal PC if they did not subscribe to the Eris Loris YouTube channel. There have not currently been any reports or proof that these threats have actually been carried out however unless the hacker says otherwise, many people will continue to believe this may be a serious threat to their personal devices.
A screenshot posted to Reddit displaying the spam Eris Loris messages.
The Among Us developer team at InnerSloth Studios was made very aware, very quickly that there was a problem with the game and within less than 12 hours began taking countermeasures to drive the hackers out. The game was not shut down completely, however. The InnerSloth team posted a message stating that "Due to increased hacking, Among Us is undergoing emergency maintenance." They later stated in the same announcement pop-up that "We are working on an account system with reporting and moderation features..." Even with all of this, many servers still remained open and players were able to create their own private matches. During the multiple days long hacking spree, there were times where players were able to enjoy multiple games of Among Us with no interruptions. These downtimes in the hacking are most likely due to either a lack of ability to continue running the hack or because the hackers wanted players to think the game was fixed so they would log back on.
Announcement pop-up featured on Among Us main menu screen.
At this time, the motives behind the attack as well as the reason for picking Among Us in particular are still unclear. The Verge news site however does claim to have conducted a Discord interview with the alleged hacker although it is unclear if this actually occurred. In their news article, however, they say that the hacker created a team of hackers in order to have a larger more widespread effect. It is also stated that the main purpose of the hack was to advertise the Eris Loris YouTube channel which shows off and offers different hacked clients for games. Although it is a disturbing and disruptive way to go about advertising, the strategy appears to have worked for the hackers as the channel went from 2 to 103 subscribers on October 22nd, the first day of the attack, and later went from 103 to a massive 5.74 thousand subscribers by October 23rd; only 24 hours after the attack started. By the end of the weekend, the channel has now amassed a subscriber count of 20.6 thousand, all within the past 72 hours. It is currently unclear whether the hacking problems have been resolved for the long term however the new anti toxicity and hacking features that InnerSloth are introducing to their game are scheduled to be released sometime in November of 2020.
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