Bethesda forums and users hacked (again)

Remember June? Great month. Alice: Madness Returns, Wii U, the PlayStation Vita, Ocarina 3D... and everybody who's ever released a videogame got hacked in one way or another. But apart from that, great month! Anyway, what with the notoriously short attention spans of the videogaming community, the disparate and anarchic hacker world wants to make sure you remember the Great Hacker Extravaganza of Q2 2011 – to which end, the forums for Bethesda Game Studios have been hacked all over again.

The new hack – which was announced by Bethesda itself, in an email to potentially affected parties – is said by Bethesda to constitute “a potential breach of our forum user database” shortly before the weekend. All user passwords have been reset, requiring users to re-enter a new password. Bethesda is urging users not to pick the same code (duh) and to update details for any other online accounts which use the same password.

While the original hack was promptly notched up to Lulz Security's flurry of headline-making online activity, that collective has since announced a cessation of such high-profile attacks. Immediately on breaking the news of its June breach, LulzSec hastened to add that its members “quite like” Bethesda and would not be releasing user details. However, with the company currently engaged in a copyright lawsuit against Mojang, publishers of Scrolls and Minecraft, many hactivists may see Bethesda as potential opponents of the free-speech tenets central to many hacker collectives. Or maybe it was just an easy target...

Aug 15, 2011