14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Square Enix has confirmed that an unknown group of attackers has managed to penetrate the security of a number of its websites, including the one for the upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution, managing to get access to about 25,000 anonymous email addresses and a number of professional resumes for people that were interested in working at various Square Enix studios.
Square Enix says that there was no credit card data stored on the servers that were attacked and that there's no way of linking the stolen email addresses to actual persons, which means that the worst they can be used for is to send out spam messages.
A statement coming from Square Enix says, “Square Enix can confirm a group of hackers gained access to parts of our Eidosmontreal.com website as well as two of our product sites.”
It adds, “We immediately took the sites offline to assess how this had happened and what had been accessed, then took further measures to increase the security of these and all of our websites, before allowing the sites to go live again.”
Information that appeared just after the attack and is still unconfirmed said that the Eidos and Deus Ex attack was the work on a faction within the Internet activist group Anonymous.
The same group has been blamed by Sony for the attack that took down the PlayStation Network on April 20, with the company saying that it has found files which pointed to the identity of the attackers.
It's not clear whether the attack on the Eidos and Deus Ex sites are part of a wider campaign to target video game companies and steal sensitive information from them or whether it's just an isolated incident that will not have long-term consequences.
The PSN and associated services are now back online, with PS3 firmware update 3.61 providing more security.