Devastating Hacking Wave Drains MTG Accounts Worldwide

by Arthur · November 2, 2022

A sensational tweet from MTGO’s Twitter account highlights a problem that has been going on in the background for the past few weeks. It turns out that a myriad of MTG players are falling victim to a wave of MTG hacks shooting across the platform. By becoming aware of the events at hand, we hope you will take some liberties to protect yourself in the event you are targeted.

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MTG Hacks cleans accounts out

My MTGO account was hacked on Monday night. I haven’t heard anything back from @MagicOnline but i’m out like 70 tix and hundreds of dollars in borrowed cards. Anybody have experience with this? Also a reply from MTGO would help.

— rebrand loading ———- (@JohnPwhetstone) 2 November 2022

My acc was similarly hacked a few months ago. I submitted a report and after a couple of weeks they gave me Tix = value of card and tix taken

— Luke Strasler (@Lightlee_Salted) 2 November 2022

The tweet above from @JohnPwhetstone has started a flood of reports of MTGO players being hacked and having their Tix and cards stolen. For Arena players unfamiliar with MTGO, unlike MTG Arena, you can trade cards between accounts on MTGO. This allows players to exchange cards acquired for in-game currency or even real money. Unfortunately, it also makes MTGO a target for events like these.

Tix are simply the in-game currency for Magic Online. One Tix is generally about the value of a single US dollar.

Most MTGO accounts will have a playable deck. For reference, a deck’s price on MTGO is comparable to a deck’s price on paper. While individual card prices fluctuate wildly, prices for Modern decks, the most popular format on the platform, on MTGO vary between $200 to $1000! It is not uncommon for experienced players to have thousands of dollars in cards in their accounts.

While hacking has been a rarity on the platform for a little while now, MTGO’s official response is what caused some players to start sounding the alarm:

Change your passwords

We have sent you a DM for details.

To everyone else: if you haven’t reset your account password recently, please do so through your in-game account settings – and make it unique to MTGO. https://t.co/Mlyf2Qa0EK

— Magic Online (@MagicOnline) 2 November 2022

Following John Pwhetstoneto his plea for a fix from MTG Online, the official account responded, asking anyone else who “hasn’t reset your account password recently” to “do so through in-game account settings – and make it unique to MTGO.”

@MagicOnline my account was hacked 10 days ago and i just received an update today that nothing can be done about what was taken from the account. Is there anything else that can be done?

— Lucas Cruz (@LucasCruz_1194) 2 November 2022

It’s been two weeks since my cards went missing and I still haven’t heard a response to my support ticket. I have lost potentially thousands of dollars on cards. Will you send me a DM and help me with a solution?

— Brent Traut (@btraut) 2 November 2022

The new responses to this post suggest that this has affected players across the site, and not everyone has been lucky enough to get an opportunity to re-acquire their stolen items. This event is incredibly recent, so there will likely be many more such responses soon.

Why is this happening?

Why should we reset our passwords? Was it a security breach???

— conradweykamp (@conradweykamp) 2 November 2022

This is just good password practice. Your passwords should be unique for each account and site and hopefully unique from everyone else’s. Don’t end up on a hacking list from somewhere else and lose the contents of your mtgo accounts. https://t.co/zwqtt2BusW

— Justin Gennari (@IamActuallyLvL1) 2 November 2022

We have yet to receive any reason why players should reset their account passwords. This has led to some responses, like the one above, asking if there is an external reason why players should reset their passwords. At this point, it’s safe to say that anyone with an MTGO account should consider resetting their password to a unique one they haven’t used before. As mentioned by MTG personality I’m actually LvL1could this hack be part of a significant data breach from another source.

If you are an unfortunate target of these MTG hacks, contact support ASAP. Twitter responses suggest that while not everyone has received compensation, it is a possibility. Once again, outside of the latest wave of hacks, we don’t know why MTGO is asking players to change their passwords. That being said, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Read more: MTG’s most expensive product has reportedly already been sold at a loss