Rhysida leaks 1.67TB of Insomniac Games data after Sony studio refuses ransom

Rhysida, a ransomware group active through 2023, said in mid-December that it had stolen data from Insomniac Games, the Sony-owned studio behind the Marvel's Spider-Man series. The group posted samples as proof and put the full set up for auction with a starting price of 50 bitcoin, worth just over $2 million at the time.

When the auction closed on December 19 without the data selling and no ransom paid, Rhysida published the bulk of what it held: roughly 1.67 terabytes across more than 1.3 million files. The material included design documents, level layouts and footage from Insomniac's unreleased Wolverine game, along with roadmaps and budgets for unannounced titles and a signed publishing agreement between Sony Interactive Entertainment and Marvel covering three X-Men games with budgets of about $120 million each and delivery dates running to 2033.

The leak also carried a large volume of personal data on current and former staff, including passport scans, bank account and credit card details, human resources and contractor files, internal investigation records and screenshots of employees' Slack conversations. Files on executives and board members were among them.

Rhysida said it had obtained domain administrator access within 20 to 25 minutes of breaching the network and described game developers as easy targets. Sony said it was investigating. The attack came weeks after Rhysida claimed responsibility for a breach of the British Library, and analysts quoted by IT Pro said the exposure of Insomniac's roadmaps and budgets carried consequences for Sony's operations beyond the studio itself.