14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian video game developer BioWare notified 18,000 users who had accounts registered on an old system that their email addresses and passwords were stolen by hackers.
The compromised community server, which dates back almost ten years according to the developer, was associated with the forums for Neverwinter Nights (NWN), an extremely popular RPG game.
"We immediately took appropriate steps to protect our consumers’ data and launched an ongoing evaluation of the seriousness of the breach," the company said.
"We have determined that no credit card data was compromised, nor did we ever have or store sensitive data like social security numbers," it added.
The hack affected around 18,000 accounts, which are only a small percentage of the total number of those registered on the server. The exposed information includes account names and passwords, email addresses, and birth dates.
The compromised accounts were either disabled or had their password reset. Their owners were emailed and asked to set new passwords. Since 2007 BioWare is owned by video game giant Electronic Arts and many of the accounts were merged into EA's systems.
"We take the security of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If your username, email address and/or password on the Neverwinter Nights forums are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing your password at those sites as well," the company advises.
Given the usual rate of password reuse on the Internet this is very solid advice. An old account on the Neverwinter Nights forum might not be too important, but if the information also gives hackers access to someone's PayPal or email account, the risks are significantly higher.
In addition, spammers could use people's known ties to BioWare to craft credible phishing attacks in an attempt to obtain more sensitive data from them. Users are advised to be on the lookout for such scam emails and report them to BioWare Customer Support at 1-866-543-5435.