BioWare Hacked, 18K Forum Accounts Breached
Posted 06/16/2011 at 11:52am | by Brad Chacos of Maximum PC.com
Another day, another hacking story full of lulz. This one's a little bit different though; the laughs don't come courtesy of Lulz Security or Anonymous, for the first time in what seems like ages. What's amusing about this story is the target! Hit videogame maker BioWare announced late yesterday that user account data may have been stolen in a recent server breach. That's not funny. What is funny: the server was a 10 year old community server that handled the "Neverwinter Nights" forums. While LulzSec recently ravaged Bethesda in search of Skyrim screenshots, the BioWare hacker apparently prefers his RPGs well-aged.
"We immediately took appropriate steps to protect our consumers’ data and launched an ongoing evaluation of the seriousness of the breach," BioWare Studio GM Aaryn Flynn posted on the company's general forum. "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."
BioWare's already reset the passwords for any accounts that may have been compromised and sent the rightful owners of the logins an email explaining the situation. Most BioWare forum-goers were completely unaffected by the breach, so don't sweat it if you don't receive an email – as long as you can still sign in to your account you're good to go. What the heck could the hacker hope to accomplish with 10 year old forum accounts?