Friday, July 14, 2006

Incident: Privacy breach hits +200K online game players

From GameSpot (via the always interesting Video Game Law Blog):

Japanese MMOG suffers privacy leak - News at GameSpot

Game Garden warns that e-mail addresses and game logs of hundreds of thousands of Xenepic Online players may have been compromised.

By Walt Wyman, GameSpot

Posted Jun 28, 2006 11:41 am PT

Game Garden, an online game developer and provider, announced today that personal user information from Xenepic Online, a free massively multiplayer online role-playing game for PCs, was inadvertently compromised. Game Garden manages the server on behalf of NHN Japan Corporation, the game's provider.

The information was mistakenly stored on an open download server, potentially allowing anyone to access it using certain exploits. Data for 297,805 users was put at risk, including their game-server usernames and passwords, e-mail addresses, and game log files, which contain information on items purchased and chat history.

However, it seems that no payment information, such as credit card information, was among the compromised data. In a press release, Game Garden apologized to Xenepic users for the security failure and pledged to "further consolidate internal management to prevent similar incidents in the future."

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