User information compromised at Elder Scrolls and Gears shops, phishing attempt hits House of Mario; Lulzsec claims responsibility for Bethesda breach.
The hacking trend that seems to have been ignited by the takedown of Sony’s PlayStation Network in April continues with word that publishers Bethesda, Nintendo, and Epic Games have all suffered security breaches.
The Nintendo and Bethesda troubles come just days after three arrests were made in connection with Sony’s online downtime and Codemasters announced its customer data was compromised. In Bethesda’s case, the publisher updated its blog today with a warning to its users, notifying them their online information had been compromised.
According to Bethesda, a hacker group broke into the publisher’s websites and grabbed user names, email address, and/or passwords. “No personal financial information or credit card data was obtained,” said Bethesda, but the publisher did say users should change their passwords.
Bethesda did not name outright who it believes hacked its websites, but hacking group Lulzsec used Twitter to proclaim it was behind the effort.
“Bethesda, we broke into your site over two months ago,” reads the tweet from this morning. “We’ve had all of your Brink users for weeks. Please fix your junk, thanks! ^_^.”
Lulzsec also tweeted two demands for what Bethesda must do if it does not want the hacking group to release the data it obtained. The group said it would release the user database unless Bethesda released more info on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and would omit admin configurations from the leak if the publisher included “an official LulzSec top hat” in the game.
Nintendo Europe acknowledged its own online headaches today, as the publisher informed users of possible phishing attempts related to its website.
“We have learned of a possible phishing threat to users of the European Nintendo website which we are currently investigating,” reads a note on the company’s website. “The protection of our customers is our utmost priority and so we have taken the precaution of immediately shutting down some parts of this website until further notice.”
Nintendo also assured users that it does not hold personal financial information like bank, credit card, or address specifics. In a phishing attempt, a third party tricks users into giving up personal information by convincing them they are communicating with a separate, legitimate outfit..
A third high profile publisher to feel the pain of a breach recently was Epic Games. makers of the Gears of War franchise and under-the-hood Unreal Engine technology.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney issued a statement last week on the matter, saying Epic Games websites and forums were hacked, and that the intrusion compromised email addresses and passwords. To rectify the issue Sweeney said all passwords were reset.
[UPDATE] Shortly after publication of this article, LulzSec released a torrent file it claimed included all of the information taken from Bethesda except for that of more than 200,000 Brink players.
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