EA says "less than 50" high-profile FIFA 22 player accounts were taken over via phishing

Multiple high-profile FIFA 22 player accounts were taken over recently due to social engineering attacks on EA's customer service, the company has confirmed.

EA wrote in an update to the official FIFA 22 site that it's currently working to restore the compromised accounts, of which it estimates there are "less than 50," to their proper owners. EA also confirmed that the attackers were specifically targeting the accounts for high-profile players, with the angle of attack being directed toward EA's own customer-facing support services rather than the players themselves.

"Through our initial investigation we can confirm that a number of accounts have been compromised via phishing techniques," the update reads. "Utilizing threats and other 'social engineering' methods, individuals acting maliciously were able to exploit human error within our customer experience team and bypass two-factor authentication to gain access to player accounts."

EA plans to add extra steps to its internal processes for verifying user accounts and is giving additional training to help EA advisors better recognize and deal with these kinds of attacks. The company notes that while some of these changes "could impact customer experience wait times, these are necessary additional steps to ensure our player accounts remain secure."