Blizzard hit by hack attack

Hackers steal user information from global gaming company

By Jane McFadyen

Games company Blizzard has suffered an online attack with hackers stealing the account details of millions of its members using North American servers.

Blizzard, which is responsible for World Of Warcraft, StarCraft and other popular online games alerted its users to the attack via its website.

Its statement reads: “This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.”

The data stolen applies to users of Battle.net accounts that are used for all of Blizzard’s games. They targeted user email addresses for people outside China.

Blizzard is advising its users who play through North American servers to change their passwords; that includes gamers in North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

To reassure its users, Blizzard says it would be very difficult for the hackers to obtain user passwords based on the information that was stolen. The company also stressed that member financial information had not been taken, including credit card details and billing addresses.