Epic Games goes public over website hack

Filed Under: Data loss, Vulnerability

Gears of War, by Epic GamesThe likes of Sony, Codemasters and Nintendo have been in the news lately for receiving the unwanted attention of hackers - and now another video game developer has announced that it has been hacked.

Epic Games, the developer of hit games such as "Gears of War", found that its website and forums had been broken into and that forum users' email addresses could have been stolen.

In addition, encrypted passwords were also taken by the intruders - making the cracking of credentials for members with shorter passwords through brute force methods a possibility.

On Friday 9 June, a statement by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was posted on the company's discussion forum, describing what had happened and advising users that their passwords had been reset by the firm as a precaution.

Epic Games statement

Even if you're not a customer of Epic Games, it's time to wake up to the need for safer passwords. And safer means no longer using short sequences ("123456") or dictionary words ("password") or the same password that you use on other websites.

Here's a YouTube video showing you how to choose a hard-to-crack, unique password:

(Enjoy this video? You can check out more on the SophosLabs YouTube channel and subscribe if you like)

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One Response to Epic Games goes public over website hack

  1. Michael Bassett says:

    its now the time that all these game developers got together and shared intel on these so called hackers to reveal who it could be. If they got together with most of these big companies would lead to alot more franchise and maybe atleast get there userbase back.

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About the author

Graham Cluley has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.