Cryptic Studios, developers of MMOs such as Champions Online, Star Trek Online and City of Heroes/Villains are the latest victims in a security breach made by hackers. They believe that unauthorized access to their databases includes access to user account names, handles, and encrypted passwords for said accounts. They also stated that even though that the passwords were encrypticed, hackers may have cracked the passwords in the database. All passwords that were in the attack database have had the passwords rested and users notified by email.

During their investigation, Cryptic also has stated that while they have no evidence, that if hackers were able to access account information, there is a possibility that they could have accessed more sensitive information such as first and last names, e-mail address, date of birth, billing address, and the first six and the last four digits of credit cards that have been registered.

Cryptic is continuing their investigation into the matter and advise all their customers that they should double check their credit cards for any fraudulent activities and report it to the card company/bank,  change all passwords to any accounts they have to the games they play and to never give any personal information out.

While its good to see developers informing their customers about security breaches and warning them to take action, there is one oversight that is mentioned. The breach happened two years ago back in December 2010, and Cryptic just noticed it this year. Gamers have given a lot of crap to Sony when their security was breached last year. But once they noticed they took the PSN down. Sure they didn’t tell consumers anything or why they shut the network down for months, but at least something was done that all could see (shutting down of PSN). There was no coverage of Cryptic game servers being shut down due to “maintenance”, no news of fans up in arms as to why they can’t access their games, nothing. Everything seems to be business as usual for the past two years until now. It’s nothing new hearing about game companies getting hacked, but most of the time the response has been quick. It took Cryptic two year just to say “We were hacked two years ago and we just now noticed so be careful”. Hopefully all companies take note of this and learn from Cryptic’s mistake.

Source: Cryptic Studios