Oh dear. Another big name in the computer games industry has been breached. Square Enix, the computer games developer behind Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Deus Ex, has taken its Members site offline after discovering it had been attacked, potentially exposing data of 1.8 million customers.
According to AFP the hacker breached an unknown number of servers and the full extent of the hack is not yet known. It is possible that servers containing details of one million Japanese and 800,000 US users of the Square Enix Members service were breached. It seems that another server holding the details of 300,000 European members was left untouched.
A spokesperson for the studio said they discovered the breach around midday local time on Tuesday, and had taken down the server within an hour. It notified affected users the following day, the company confirmed.
Information stored included names and email address but the spokesperson added that many members had also registered their postal address and phone numbers. No credit card information was stored, the company said.
"We are yet to learn whether illegal access was gained to our clients’ information," the spokesperson told AFP. "But we have asked our customers to be aware of the incident in case they receive suspicious messages using our name."
There is no indication at this time who was behind the attack.
It’s not been a good year for the computer games industry when it comes to hacking. Earlier this year the Song PlayStation network was breached on a number of occasions with the details of up to 100 million members potentially exposed.
Nintendo was also hacked earlier this year by the infamous group LulzSec. However in a tweet the hackers said that they meant no harm and that they "love" both Nintendo and Sega.
CBR took an in-depth look at what happened with the Sony attacks and what is being done to stop the bad guys winning.
