A recent hacking attack on the game developer Square Enix’s servers has been revealed to have affected information on user accounts belonging to 1.8 million members in the U.S. and Japan. It is just one of the rapidly increasing corporate hacking events across the technology world in the past year.
The developer, whose franchises include Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, told the world that hackers “may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server”. The company has taken measures to prevent further damage, taking down their website Japan and the U.S. offline in order to assess the extent of the attack. A final report showed that one million Japanese user accounts were affected, along with 800,000 accounts in the U.S.
If it’s any consolation, unlike the attack on Sony earlier in the year, those affected shouldn’t worry for their credit card information, as the accounts only contain names, email addresses, postal addresses, and phone numbers. Square Enix account holders, especially those who use their services for paid MMO games should stay tuned for more news in case the situation is found to be contrary to this announcement.
“There is no possibility of any credit card information leak,” said Square Enix in an official statement. “We have asked our customers to be aware of the incident in case they receive suspicious messages using our name.” Hopefully this is true. Credit card details are highly sought after on restricted parts of the internet, known as Darknet, where individual account details are often used as a form of currency.
This means customers should be aware of Phishing emails, where the sender claims to be an official requiring card details in order to steal them. Top tip: if you receive an e-mail from Square Enix as a result of this attack, check across the net for news of any such email, fraudulent or not, before opening it or anything attached to it.
Square Enix’s servers have been targeted before this year, with a hacker breaching one of the developer’s European servers and leaking email addresses of 25,000 customers and CVs of 250 job applicants last May.
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