Blizzard’s Battle.net Servers Accessed By Hackers, Successfully Steal User Data
Mike Morhaime of Blizzard Entertainment has issued a security update detailing an intrusion into their network, which managed to steal private user information. The information taken consisted of email addresses for global battle.net users outside China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. However Blizzard does not believe that enough information was taken to allow unauthorized access to battle.net accounts.
Passwords were also stolen, but these were encrypted versions, so are therefore unlikely to be of use to the criminals. However, Blizzard will still make customers update their security questions and passwords to ensure the continuing security of their accounts.
We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password.
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