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Konami ID portal breached, change your password
On July 8, Konami discovered numerous access errors through its Konami ID portal site and subsequently commissioned a report. Over 35,252 successful unauthorized logins were uncovered out of nearly four million attempts to gain access – similar to the Club Nintendo Japan hacks reported last week. The access was achieved through login information Konami believes leaked from "an external service provider." Konami suggests all users change their passwords as a precaution and will individually contact owners of affected accounts who may have had their username, password, address, telephone number, date of birth and email address information stolen from the third-party leak. In response to the breach, Konami says it has "strengthened its security and raised its monitoring level, and measures have been taken to ensure that IDs and passwords involved in these unauthorized logins can no longer be used to log in."
World of Warcraft hiding information in screenshots
Like Transformers, there may be more to a World of Warcraft screenshot than meets the eye. Our sister site WoW Insider is reporting that players have discovered hidden watermarks in every in-game screenshot that contains several pieces of information. The watermark is made up of several strips of custom bar codes, which can be decoded to reveal information from the game. While the revealed information isn't extremely personal, it does contain the server IP, player account numbers, and a time stamp. The account number is publically accessable through Blizzard's Armory site and cannot be used to hack accounts. WoW Insider says that this information is most likely used by Blizzard to take down private servers, rogue employees, and cheaters.
Report: LulzSec hacking group releases thousands of account logins, includes Xbox Live and Facebook [update]
Adding to the list of game-related companies it has attacked, LulzSec yesterday claimed to have stolen and leaked the login and password information for approximately 62,000 "internet accounts," reports the CBC. The stolen info is said to comprise logins/passwords from Facebook, Twitter, "dating sites," PayPal and, notoriously, Xbox Live. It is also claimed that the majority of accounts are from the United states, though several other countries are named in the report. The account database info is still currently available through the LulzSec website (though we'd suggest not visiting) -- various folks on Twitter responding to the group claim to have done a variety of things with the information, from having a large pack of condoms delivered to an elderly woman, to one person saying they bilked a PayPal account for £250 ($404). Earlier this week, the group attacked and successfully took down a handful of game industry websites, including EVE Online, Minecraft and The Escapist. All three sites quickly recovered and have been online since. Microsoft has yet to respond to request for comment on yesterday evening's alleged breach. Update: Microsoft has released a statement, which states that Xbox Live was not compromised to the best of Microsoft's knowledge, and the logins/passwords were released at random, with people encouraged to try said information on services like Xbox Live (among others). "This group appears to have posted a list of thousands of potential email addresses and passwords, and encouraged users to try them across various online sites like Xbox Live in the event one of the users happens to use the same password and email address combination. At this time we do not have any evidence Xbox Live has been compromised. However we take the security of our service seriously and work on an ongoing basis to improve it against evolving threats."
Officers' Quarters: A dangerous gift
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.It's the holiday season, and for many players that means extended periods away from Azeroth as we spend more time with family and friends. If your characters are a critical part of your guild's success, you may be tempted to give another player access to your account so they can help the guild in your absence. It's a generous and noble gesture, but in the big picture it's a dangerous gift to give. I would urge everyone to be a Scrooge and keep your account info all to yourself. And this week's e-mail shows why:What do you do as a guild leader, when you have two or three different people in your guild that have, in the past, shared accounts, and then one leaves the guild in an ugly way? Or at all?Especially if one has guild bank access?I know that, technically, sharing accounts is against the EULA, but among young teens it seems fairly common . . . especially in raiding guilds, where if a raid is short a priest, JohnnyX may have access to another guildies' account so he can bring the AFK player's priest on.What do you do if one leaves? The other two accounts are mostly played by the owners . . . but if the toon comes online, but the player isn't on a voice chat application, how do you know it is REALLY the owner, and not the player that left? Worse yet, what if the player had been booted?Is it right to remove other people from a guild because they have shared their account with someone else?
