Another video games co. hit by hack attack

A second video game manufacturer has been hit by hackers, who are thought to have stolen personal information from as many as 80,000 fans and job hunters, it has emerged.

Eidos Interactive, maker of the popular Tomb Raider games, confirmed earlier today that its webiste had been attacked and some are blaiming a splinter cell of “hacktivist” group Anonymous.

Security expert Brian Krebs revealed on his blog that the site for the game Deus Ex was defaced with the message “Owned by Chippy1337?” as well as what appeared to be the online aliases of the hackers on Wednesday and the site, as well as its user forum and Eidos’ website were unavailable on Thursday. Eidos has now admitted in a press release that the CVs of hundreds of hopeful job hunters stored online had been stolen as well as “up to 25,000 email addresses” of Deus Ex fans.

The company pointed out that the email addresses “are not linked to any additional personal information. They were site registration email addresses provided to us for users to receive product information updates.”

However, online security firm Sophos warned of the dangers victims may now face. In a blog post published today, the firm’s senior technology consultant Graham Cluley wrote: “One threat is that if your email address is one of the 25,000 that has been stolen, you could receive a scam email (perhaps containing a malicious link or attached Trojan horse) that pretends to come from a video game company. After all, the hackers know that you’re interested enough in video games to give your email address to Eidos.

“Secondly, the resumes from job hunters. This is a more serious problem. Just think of all the personal information you include on your CV: full name, date of birth, email and home address, telephone number, job history. This kind of information is a God-send to identity thieves interested in defrauding internet users.”

The news comes just weeks after it was revealed that Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) was compromised in what is thought to have been the biggest hack attack in history. Some blamed Anonymous for that attack but the organisation denied responsibility.

Brian Krebs published a conversation, which appears to be between hackers “covering their tracks” on his own blog. Krebs writes: “A hacker using the alias ‘ev0?’ discusses having defaced the sites and downloading some 9,000 resumes from Eidos. ev0 and other hackers discuss leaking ‘src,’ which may refer to source code for Deus Ex or other Eidos games. In a separate conversation, the hackers also say they have stolen information on at least 80,000 Deus Ex users and that they plan to release the data on file-sharing networks.”

While some blame the obvious targets, other have asked why hackers would voluntarily leave their own names ‘at the scene of the crime’.

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• stonedwolf

  Anonymous now has splinter cells? o_0
    
  Nah. Chippy1337 is just a lone hacker who has hacked a few webs-servers and defaced a few websites. He has been doing it for a while now, you can track his progress via Google if you search for his tag and date ranges.
   
  For example, an LA Times story was hacked December last year to read, “Pressure builds in House to elect CHIPPY 1337 House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer sees ‘very good things’ in the deal cut which will see uber skid Chippy 1337 take his rightful place, as head of the Senate, reluctant House Democrats told to SUCK IT UP”.
   
  You can also read Chippy1337 talking to other hackers and asking for help. Go to the website pastebin (dot) com (forwardslash) Gi95yFc4
   
  If you go to anonnews (dot) org /?p=comments&c=press&i=34 you will seen what Anonymous thinks of Chippy1337. This is 14 December last year by the way:
   
  “This chippy1337 character is a real disruption to the Internet. I told him that our IRC was not for hacking, and he hit it with a denial of service attack for 6 days. Our provider says they were unable to access their own servers, either. Later, they showed me the logs from their end, their bandwidth graph spiked over 40gbps before the entire farm failed. I don’t know who he is, but activities like this really anger me”
   
  Some “splinter cell”. Perhaps I should hire myself out to the Independent to write up stories like this….