Epic Games offers $1 million for anyone with proof of a “smear campaign” against Houseparty

Over the weekend, viral messages started to circulate online regarding so-called “Houseparty Hacks”, alleging that Houseparty, a face-to-face video chat app, was used to hack into email accounts, Spotify accounts and accounts for other services. 

The allegations are that Houseparty is a “rogue app”, said Sophos’ Paul Ducklin to the BBC, a piece of software that is “actively breaking into every part of your digital life and plundering it in a determined burst of criminality.” The problem is that Houseparty is an application that “a mainstream app published by a well-known software company (Epic Games) in Apple’s and Google’s official online stores.”

Epic Games has investigated these rumours, and have found them to be fictitious. They believe that this is part of a “commercial smear campaign” that designed to “harm Houseparty.” Epic Games is so confident that this is true, that they are offering a $1,000,000 bounty to the first individual who can provide proof of such a campaign. 

We have spent the past few weeks feeling humbled and grateful that we can be such a large part of bringing people together during such a hard time.

— Houseparty (@houseparty) March 31, 2020

With more and more people practising social distancing and self-isolation, video chat services like Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom and Houseparty have grown in popularity. This factor makes now the time to build your company’s brand and an excellent opportunity to ruin a rival’s reputation. 

So far, many of the original posts regarding these “Houseparty Hacks” have been deleted from Social Media, some of these viral Tweets remain online. The BBC has contacted some of the those who claimed that their, or their friends, were hacked after downloading Houseparty.

During their investigation, the BBC was uncovered that these sharers had no evidence linking their hacks to the Houseparty application, and that these users were using the same passwords for multiple online accounts. These sharers only made the connection after seeing the others post about “Houseparty Hacks”.   

Epic Games and Houseparty have insisted that their customer data is safe and secure within their database, “salted and hashed in line with the best industry practices.”

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