Skip to footer

Blizzard Battle.net breach leaves user data exposed

Battle.net servers were attacked by hackers this week, Blizzard's CEO has confirmed. 

|
Reuters
Battle.net, the gaming portal run by Blizzard Entertainment, has been hit by hackers. Play World of Warcraft online? Make sure to change your password.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Blizzard Entertainment, the California-based gaming giant behind World of Warcraft and Diablo III, has confirmed that its internal network was attacked by hackers. In a message to users today, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said the extent of the breach appears to be confined to email addresses and scraps of Battle.net log-in information – credit card numbers, billing addresses, and real names were reportedly not exposed. 

"Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China," Morhaime wrote. "For players on North American servers, the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts."

So how many players use North American servers? Well, according to Morhaime, it's not just North Americans – players in Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia would all be affected. The precise nature and timing of the attack remain unclear, but Blizzard says it is currently working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate the incident. 

Assuming you're a Battle.net user in one of the areas listed above, the first thing you should do is change your password. The link is here. If your Battle.net log-in is the same as your email or Twitter or Facebook log-in, you should change that information, too. (In fact, even if you're not a Battle.net user, you should get into the habit of running different passwords and log-ins on different accounts.)

In related news, earlier this month Morhaime revealed that during Q2 of 2012, the number of World of Warcraft subscribers shrank from 10.2 million to 9.1 million – a plunge he attributed to the lack of new content. He also pointed to the remedy: Mists of Pandaria, an expansion pack launching on Sept. 25. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Blizzard Battle.net breach leaves user data exposed
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0810/Blizzard-Battle.net-breach-leaves-user-data-exposed
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe