Bioware hacked: Seven major game developers now victims of cyber attacks

Today games company Bioware revealed that it had fallen victim to a successful cyber attack against its Neverwinter Nights forums, bringing the total number of games companies hacked to seven.

Bioware

Bioware today released a statement confirming a recent cyber attack on its website's near decade-old Neverwinter Nights forums.

Like the cyber attacks before it the attack seemed to focus on obtaining the website's account holders personal rather than financial information -- whether this was by choice or because there was more security around the financial data is currently unknown.

In a statement released on its website Bioware Representatives clarified:

"We have determined that no credit card data was compromised, nor did we ever have or store sensitive data like social security numbers.

"However hackers may have obtained information such as user account names and passwords, email addresses, and birth dates of approximately 18,000 accounts--a very small percentage of total users."

The company has since contacted the 18,000 affected account holders urging them to reset their account passwords.

Bethesda Softworks

The attack on Bethesda was revealed earlier this week. The hacker collective LulzSec, which has also targeted Nintendo and Sony, has since claimed responsibility.

LulzSec claimed that it carried out the attack two months ago and had managed to take over 200,000 Bethesda customers usernames and passwords during it.

LulzSec cited its reason for posting the data as to show its superiority over other "groups" that had reported flaws in Bethesda's most recent title Brink:

"As of late, certain inferior sailing boats have discovered flaws in Brink (brinkthegame.com), thinking themselves exciting and new.

"Some weeks ago, we smashed into Brink with our heavy artillery Lulz Cannons and decided to switch to ninja mode."

Nintendo

The cyber attack against Nintendo was revealed when the company posted a statement earlier this week on its U.K. website warning users of a possible phishing attack.

In the statement, while reassuring its customers that no financial data had been compromised as a result of the attack, it does warn that certain users contact details and usernames may have been made vulnerable.

"We have learnt of a possible phishing threat to users of the European Nintendo website which we are currently investigating. 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.

"We would like to reassure you that we do not hold our customer's bank, credit card or address details on the European Nintendo website and so this data is not at risk.

"Phishing is when someone attempts to find out your personal information, such as usernames and passwords, by pretending to be a trustworthy person or company in an electronic communication such as an email or via a website."

Epic Games

The recent hacking attempt on Epic Games targeted the company's website. It was reported by the company just as Nintendo was announcing its own cyber security breach.

Epic's website does not hold user's financial information meaning that there was no possibility for the hackers to take account holders credit information was safe.

Like the other attacks, the hackers focused on obtaining user information. In its subsequent statement Epic warned its customers:

"Our Epic Games web sites and forums were recently hacked... After some downtime, they're back up and running now.

"The hackers may have obtained the email addresses and encrypted passwords of forum users. Plaintext passwords weren't revealed, but it's possible that those passwords could be obtained by a brute-force attack on the encrypted passwords. Therefore, we have reset all passwords. Your new password at the bottom of this message.

"The Unreal Developer Network (UDN) hasn't been compromised. Thankfully, none of our web sites ask for, or store, credit card information or other financial data."

Codemasters

Veteran U.K. based games developer Codemasters confirmed earlier this month that its network had also been hacked.

In an open letter to its customers the company admitted that it's website had fallen victim to a successful cyber attack.

Like the other recently hacked games company's, Codemasters confirmed to its customers that while no credit or bank information was lost in the hack, several of its users encrypted passwords, Xbox Live Gamertags, email addresses and usernames were.

Square Enix

Japanese games developer Square Enix, who are responsible for creating the Final Fantasy and Kingdom of Hearts franchises, were targeted by as yet unknown hackers mid-way through last month.

In keeping with the current pattern, the cyber attack focused on the company's website.

In a statement released after the attack the Square Enix confirmed that the hackers had successfully stolen as many as 25,000 customer's email addresses, as well as 350 c.v.'s of individuals applying for work at the company's Canadian office.

Sony

Thus far Sony are the only company to have reported a major cyber security breach that could have compromised its users credit information.

The initial attack, which infamously left the PlayStation customers without the use of the PlayStation network for nearly two months, happened in mid-April this year.

The attack compromised the data of up to 100 million PSN user's accounts including billing information.

Since then the group has suffered multiple attacks from the hacker group LulzSec, which has used Sony's handling of the PSN's outage and ongoing cyber weakness as a justification for its actions.

The two major hacks focused on its pictures entertainment website and BMG music division.