14 DAY TRIAL // Sega became the latest game developer to suffer a data breach in recent months after admitting that hackers broke into its customer service system and stole information about 1.3 million accounts.
Sega announced yesterday that names, birth dates, email addresses and hashed passwords were stolen from its Sega Pass services.
Because this service is only used to announce new products there was no credit card information stored on the compromised system.
Sega Pass was taken offline immediately after the intrusion was discovered and is currently undergoing upgrades. Affected customers were alerted about the breach via e-mail.
The company apologized for the incident and promised to make security a top priority across in an effort to regain people's trust. Sega is probably very worried about the effects data leaks can have on a business.
Sony's shares have dropped in value after the company dealt with a series of such incidents in recent months, starting with a major one on its PlayStation Network which affected over 76 million users.
LulzSec, a notorious hacking group that targeted Sony and other game developers recently, denied any involvement in this breach. In fact, the outfit offered to hunt down the hackers who attacked Sega.
"@Sega - contact us. We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down," LulzSec wrote on Twitter. The group previously notified Nintendo about a vulnerability in its systems instead of exploiting it because it also claimed to love the Nintendo 64 console.
Some of the game development and publishing companies that were recently involved in similar incidents include BioWare, Epic Games, Codemasters, Bethesda and id Software. However, it's not only companies from the video gaming industry that are targeted by hackers, 2011 seeing an overall spike in the number of attacks.