Hacking

Gabe Newell has admitted t is "probable" that the hackers who recently breached security on Valve's Steam platform made off with customer data. In an email sent to Steam users, reported by CVG, Newell reaffirms that there is no evidence that information held in the main Steam database was compromised. The company believes, however, that a backup file containing information several years old was taken. More >

Microsoft claims it has made improvements to the way its support centres handle compromised Xbox Live accounts, and in most cases is returning them to their rightful owners within three days. The claim comes from Alex Garden, general manager of Xbox Live, in a post on Major Nelson's blog to coincide with Safer Internet Day. He stresses the importance of users being vigilant in their use of personal information online, and says that much is being done at Microsoft's end to ensure its systems remain secure. More >

Canadian import website Videogamesplus.ca has been hacked, with the personal information of 21,000 users leaked onto the internet. Spotted by random_dave on our forums, customer details including names, phone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were uploaded to the Pastebin website. A link to the entire database has since been removed by download site Rapidshare. More >

UK retailer Game Group has denied reports that its game.co.uk website has been hacked. Earlier today Softpedia reported that attackers had breached Game's website security by exploiting a shell injection vulnerability, and posted email addresses and passwords in plain text of 200 users on the Pastebin website. In a statement, however, the retailer has denied any such breach had taken place. More >

Microsoft has strenuously denied claims that lax security on the Xbox.com website is to blame for the recent spate of Xbox Live account thefts. "The online safety of Xbox Live members remains of the utmost importance, which is why we consistently take measures to protect Xbox Live against ever-changing threats," the company told us in a statement issued on Friday. "Security in the technology industry is an ongoing process, and with each new form of technology designed to deter attacks, the attackers try to find new ways to subvert it." More >

Microsoft has moved to insist that its Xbox Live service hasn't been breached, and that the ongoing glut of account thefts are the result of phishing attacks. The company's statement comes after one user managed to track down the hacker who had stolen her account and spent over $300 on Microsoft Points using her stored credit card details, and found websites with thousands of Live accounts up for sale. More >

An Xbox Live user whose account was compromised and used to purchase thousands of Microsoft Points has identified the hacker involved, and discovered websites where accounts are up for sale. In a lengthy post on Tumblr, the user explains that her account was compromised not once, but twice, despite Microsoft having insisted the account had been locked. When she queried this with Microsoft she was told: "The fraud department was unable to block your account." More >

Square Enix has confirmed that no personal user data was taken in the recent attack on the Square Enix Members site. The publisher took Members - a community site for North American and Japanese users - offline last week after it spotted the attack, and later warned that the data of up to 1.8 million customers may have been compromised. More >

Square Enix has taken its free community site, Square Enix Members, offline after its security was breached by hackers. The publisher is now working to establish the scope of the attack on the Members site, which is only available in North America and Japan. It stresses that there is no risk of credit card data being compromised because none was stored on the server that was compromised. More >

Thirteen million user accounts have been compromised after online game MapleStory was hacked, publisher Nexon has confirmed. Nexon discovered last Thursday that data including user IDs, passwords, names and residential registration numbers had been taken, according to the Korea Herald, though only South Korean user accounts were compromised. More >

Sony evidently prefers to look on the bright side following the attack that took PSN offline for six weeks earlier this year, saying it "woke up dormant customers". Speaking to TechRadar, senior director of global business strategy and development Soichiro Saida said that user numbers and revenue were up, attributing PSN's reviving fortunes to Sony's efforts to improve the service and the Welcome Back programme, which encouraged users back to the service with free games. More >

UPDATE: AMD has provided the following statement: "This past weekend, activation keys associated with free Dirt 3 game vouchers shipping with select AMD products were compromised. These activation keys were hosted on a thirdparty fulfilment agency website, www.AMD4u.com, and did not reside on AMD’s website. Neither the AMD nor Codemasters servers were involved. We are working closely with Steam, Codemasters, and our fulfilment agency to address the situation. AMD will continue to honour all valid game vouchers, however the current situation may result in a short delay before the vouchers can be redeemed." ORIGINAL STORY: Publisher Codemasters has, together with AMD, been running a promotion giving away a download copy of Dirt 3 to purchasers of one of the latter's graphics cards. Kotaku reports that Codemasters had three million codes sitting on a webserver, which was accessed by hackers. One saving grace is that the codes in question were for Steam, which should make it relatively easy to blacklist the stolen codes, and gives Codemasters or Valve the option of banning those who used them.

The group behind the hack on SWGalaxies.net is ObSec, which according to VentureBeat is a small collective with sympathies for LulzSec and AntiSec. Some 21,000 email addresses and 23,000 passwords were taken in the attack and subsequently posted online.