Square Enix, famous for the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest franchises, has reported that a hacker gained unauthorized access to one of their servers. 1.8 million gamers in the US and Japan were affected although the company claims that no credit card information was compromised in the attack.
According to reports, the target of the attack was a free fan site called Square Enix Members. Officials at Square Enix noticed the unauthorized access on December 12 and subsequently shut the site down to investigate. Members of the site register using their email addresses but some enter additional information like names, addresses and phone numbers. A spokesperson for Square Enix said no credit card information is stored on the server.
Those affected include 1 million users from Japan and 800,000 gamers in the US. As of writing, the Square Enix Members site remains offline, instead redirecting visitors to a page explaining the breach and actions the company is taking moving forward. The message indicates that the suspension will continue for a few days until the security team completes their investigation and counter-measures are in place.
The video game industry has been the target of several hacker attacks this year. In April, Sony was hit with multiple attacks, bringing the company’s PlayStation Network offline for more than a month. Square Enix was also hacked around the same time. The email addresses of 25,000 customers and roughly 250 job applications were obtained and leaked in that attack.
