Cyberwar continues: Eidos hacked, info compromised

Hackers might have accessed up to 25,000 e-mail addresses and 350 résumés during an attack on game developer Eidos Interactive’s websites, parent company Square Enix said Friday.

The security breach, which Square Enix said occurred Wednesday, could have given hackers access to user data for the Deus Ex: Human Revolution website, as well as résumés submitted by job applicants to Eidos.

“Square Enix can confirm a group of hackers gained access to parts of our Eidosmontreal.com websiteas well as two of our product sites,” the company told Joystiq. “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.”

Square Enix added that it would be contacting all parties that might have been affected by the breach, emphasizing that no credit card information was compromised.

According to a report by former Washington Post writer Brian Krebs, the official Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Eidos websites were inaccessible Thursday morning. During this period, hackers reportedly put up a banner that read “Owned by Chippy1337.”
The hackers, Krebs wrote, said they plan to distribute the stolen information on file sharing networks. His report pegs the volume of information stolen, according to the hackers, to be the personal information of more than 80,000 users and 9,000 ésumés.

A recent Ars Technica report suggests there might be discord among members of hacking collective Anonymous, centering on a 17-year-old British hacker named Ryan. According to a chat log uncovered by Krebs, the Eidos hackers attempted to frame Ryan for the attack.

It’s unclear whether this is related to the crippling hack on Sony’s PlayStation Network several weeks ago that left millions of users’ personal information at risk. Anonymous has disavowed responsibility for that attack.

Neither Square Enix nor Eidos Interactive responded to Wired.com’s requests for comment Friday.