European summoners, it’s time to change your passwords.
Nobody likes hackers, especially when they’re crashing Sony’s PSN or stealing your Diablo III character’s gear. There’s a new group of gamers who have reason to curse those damn hackers, though – League of Legends players in Europe.
In a post on the League EU forums, Riot Games president Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill admitted that his company’s European databases had been compromised. “Hackers gained access to certain personal player data contained in certain EU West and EU Nordic & East databases; as a security precaution, we’re emailing all players on these platforms,” he wrote.
The “most critical” data that the intruders could have accessed included “email address, encrypted account password, summoner name, date of birth,” as well as first and last names and security questions/answers for a small number of the populace. However, he stressed that no payment or billing information was compromised in any way.
While the password data was encrypted, said Merrill, the company’s investigation “determined that more than half of the passwords were simple enough to be at risk of easy cracking.” So that’s a big hint that it may be time to stop using “password1” for your password, folks.
Merrill said that as a precaution, every League EU player should change his or her password here, and if those players use their League passwords on different sites they should change them there as well.
“[CEO Brandon Beck] and I want to sincerely and personally apologize to you for this situation,” wrote Merrill. “We take your privacy and security seriously, and we’re working diligently to improve it for the better.”
Source: League of Legends EU
