Blizzard said today if found illegal and unauthorized access to its
internal network. The company said a list of e-mail addresses from
Battle.net users outside of China were accessed, but found no evidence
of compromised financial information, however.
Blizzard said it's currently investigating the situation. Company president Mike Morhaime issued a statement, which can be read in full below.
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Players and Friends,
Even when you
are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun. 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.
At this time, we’ve found no evidence that
financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real
names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing
suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.
Some data was illegally accessed,
including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside
of China. For players on North American servers (which generally
includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New
Zealand, and Southeast Asia) 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.
We also know that cryptographically
scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for
players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote
Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to
make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also
means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a
precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers
change their password. Please click this link to change your password.
Moreover, if you have used the same or similar passwords for other
purposes, you may want to consider changing those passwords as well. In
the coming days, we'll be prompting players on North American servers
to change their secret questions and answers through an automated
process.
Additionally, we'll prompt mobile
authenticator users to update their authenticator software. As a
reminder, phishing emails will ask you for password or login
information. Blizzard Entertainment emails will never ask for your
password. We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of you and
understand you may have questions. Please find additional information
here.
We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.
Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
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