League of Legends Hacked, Credit Card Data Still Secure, Developer Says

Riot Games, the developer behind the massively successful League of Legends free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) title, has announced that some of its servers were hacked. The attackers managed to get their hands on things like email addresses or encrypted passwords of the game’s users but, fortunately, its credit card databases weren’t breached.

Hackers have started abusing quite a few big videogame companies in recent years, with the most infamous attack being targeted at Sony’s PlayStation Network back in 2011.

Now, a new company has fallen prey to cyber attackers, in the form of Riot Games, as nefarious individuals have breached the servers of its League of Legends online title.

Over the weekend the company confirmed the attack and revealed to customers that, while their emails or passwords might have been breached, their credit card data was still secure.

“After thorough and urgent investigation, with help from independent security experts,” Riot revealed, “we have determined:
- Hackers gained access to certain personal player data contained in certain EU West and EU Nordic & East databases ; as a security precaution, we're emailing all players on these platforms
- The most critical data accessed included email address, encrypted account password, summoner name, date of birth, and – for a small number of players – first and last name and encrypted security question and answer. (Note: Security question and answer are no longer used in our account recovery process.)
- Absolutely no payment or billing information of any kind was included in the breach.”

Since the attack occurred, Riot has been working together with experts and the authorities to catch the perpetrators, while upgrading the security of its servers.

“We've fixed the specific security issue that hackers exploited,” the studio said. “Our investigation into this issue is ongoing – we've hired experts and are working with the relevant authorities to more thoroughly understand causes, culprits, and preventative measures to make future breaches less likely. We've redirected teams to quickly implement new security measures that will help improve the safety of your data.”

Riot advises all League of Legends users to change their passwords and to make them harder to guess.

Expect to hear more about this breach in the near future.

Via: League of Legends Hacked, Credit Card Data Still Secure, Developer Says