EA's Troubles Keep Getting Worse: Big Security Flaw Discovered In Origin Platform

from the another-day,-another... dept        http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130318/01034122364/eas-troubles-keep-getting-worse-big-security-flaw-discovered-origin-platform.shtml

Perhaps the timing is a coincidence, but following the absolutely disastrous SimCity launch, in which EA's focus on DRM seemed to get in the way of actually making a product that works, it's been announced that CEO John Riccitiello is stepping down at the end of the month. This is clearly not a planned succession situation, because the company's former CEO, Larry Probst, who ran EA from 1991 until 2007 when he handed it over to Riccitiello is taking over as interim CEO as they search for a real replacement. Perhaps they should look for someone who recognizes that providing a good product that people want to support is a better goal than "stopping piracy." Just a suggestion.

Of course, they may also have bigger issues to deal with. Rich Kulawiec was the first of a few of you to submit the news that researchers have demonstrated a pretty big security vulnerability in EA's Origin platform (the company's Steam competitor), which can be used to exploit local vulnerabilities on the computers of about 40 million Origin users. If you'd like to see the hack in action, there's a nice video. You can read the details directly, if you'd like, which comes complete with some graphics explaining how the security vulnerability, found in the URI handling of Origin, can be exploited: You get the feeling that March 2013 is a month that EA would prefer to forget ever existed.