The Blizzard data breach was the latest in a long line of security incidents affecting gaming companies, a list that most notably includes the PlayStation Network hack from last year, which turned into a massive PR nightmare for Sony and caused the company to shut the network down for weeks.
Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to accounts.” 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.
“Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global users, outside of China. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed,” the company’s CEO, Mike Morhaime, said in a statement at the time. “At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. The company was not specific about the timing of the breach discovery, saying only that its security team had discovered the breach that week. The data breach was discovered in early August and Blizzard, which makes a number of popular online games, notified customers within a few days. The suit claims that the company did not do enough to secure users’ accounts before the compromise and that the company now is forcing users to pay for a two-factor authentication system to increase the security on their accounts. UPDATED–A group of customers is suing gaming giant Blizzard Entertainment in connection with a data breach in August that resulted in user email addresses, hashed passwords and other information being stolen by attackers.