Last night, we reported that Cryptic Studios games Star Trek Online and Champions Online had experienced an unspecified breach of user accounts. In their initial announcement, given via an email to customers potentially affected by the breach, few details were provided. We followed up with them and were directed by Cryptic Studios rep to a web page they established late last night which provides far more information about the situation.
The breach occurred in December, 2010, and affected the following user data: account names, handles, and encrypted passwords. The breach was only just discovered due to “increased security analysis”. Though all passwords are encrypted, Cryptic has discovered evidence that several passwords were actually cracked, which means user accounts were accessed. As a result, all users who may have been affected have had their passwords reset. Cryptic is, for now, reporting that there isn’t any evidence that anything more serious than names, handles, and encrypted passwords were nabbed. However, their investigation is ongoing. Affected users should obviously check their financial statements to be certain they haven’t been compromised outside of the games in question.
Here is Cryptic Studios’ statement in full:
At Cryptic Studios, your privacy and security is important. As part of our ongoing efforts to monitor and enhance security, we recently detected evidence of an unauthorized access to one of our user databases. The unauthorized access occurred in December 2010, and evidence of this has just been uncovered due to increased security analysis.
The unauthorized access included user account names, handles, and encrypted passwords for those accounts. Even though the passwords were encrypted, it is apparent that the intruder has been able to crack some portion of the passwords in this database. All accounts that we believe were present in the database have had the passwords reset, and customers registered to these accounts have been notified via e-mail of this incident.
While we have no evidence that any other information was taken by the intruder, it is possible that the intruder was able to access additional account information. If they did so, the first and last name, e-mail address, date of birth (if provided to Cryptic Studios), billing address, and the first six digits and the last four digits of credit cards registered on the site may have been accessed. We have no evidence at this time that any data other than the account name, handle, and encrypted password were accessed for any user.
We are continuing to investigate this incident, and are taking even further action to strengthen our systems and redouble our security vigilance and protections. For your own security, we encourage you to be especially aware of e-mail and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Cryptic will not contact you in any way, including by e-mail, asking for your credit card number, social security number, or any other personally identifiable information. If you use the same password for other accounts, especially financial accounts or accounts with personal information, we strongly recommend that you change them.
While we have no evidence of unauthorized use of personal information as a result of this incident, to protect against any possible identity theft, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. Further information regarding the prevention of identity theft can be found at the Federal Trade Commission’s website here.
We apologize for any inconvenience this unauthorized access may have caused our customers. Customers with questions about this incident and how it may affect them can contact customer service by submitting a support ticket at https://support.perfectworld.com/app/cs_cryptic/iss/log.
You have to give them credit for what appears, at least for now, to be a concerted effort to make their customers aware of the breach as soon as it was confirmed. It’s a marked change from the way a certain other company handled things this time last year.