Popular online multiplayer game Roblox has been hacked by people trying to gain more support for president Donald Trump for the upcoming election 2020.
The BBC reports that some of the game’s users have found their profile messages changed and their avatars dressed in items that resemble those of the US president’s supporters.
The hackers are changing the affected avatar’s clothing and forcing them to don a hat called The Encierro, which resembles the Trump campaign’s red “Make America Great Again” cap. Hackers are also switching the player’s clothes to either an eagle t-shirt, or a red, white and blue getup. And, once the user has been completely transformed, they can send messages to others on a player’s friend list, such as “ask your parents to vote for Trump this year!” and “MAGA2020”.
There is a terrible event of hacking in the Roblox community in which Roblox accounts are being turned into Trump Advocate Bot Accounts. You can look it up on Twitter. This is true. I have no clue why they would hack accounts to advocate Trump. It’s quite hysterical. pic.twitter.com/IdlhZmBeJG
— Anthony Eats Restaurant (@PirateVikingAnt) June 27, 2020
bruh my roblox got hacked and this is what they did KBNFBJHFKFHKDHDJ AND THEY TEXTED ALL OF MY FRIENDS “Ask your parents to vote for Trump this year! # MAGA2020” LIKE WHY WOULD YOU HACK ME JUST TO DO THAT pic.twitter.com/zGxFFMHIxP
— p ? (@astralpod) June 26, 2020
It seems likely this hack was carried out by trolls or individual Trump supporters rather than the official Trump campaign, although whoever’s doing it has put in some serious effort. The BBC estimates at least 1000 accounts have been affected, a number found by searching the number of hacked profiles indexed by Google. The methods used by hackers are still unknown, although some suspect it’s a case of brute-forcing passwords. Still, it’s a security problem that Roblox will need to investigate.