Japanese publisher Koei Tecmo announced over the Christmas holiday that some personal data from 65,000 users of its English-language site had been hacked, leading the company to remove its sites from the US and the UK for moment offline.
“Within the website operated by KTE, the ‘Forum’ page and information about registered users (approximately 65,000 entries) were determined based on data that could have been violated,” said Koei Tecmo in a press release on December 25, reported for the first time of BleepingComputer. “User data that could have been disseminated through hacking is perceived as the (optional) account name and related password (encrypted) and / or registered email address.”
Editor – who is responsible for The warrior of the dynasty series, including several Musou spin-offs and recent ones Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity –wrote that the hack seemed isolated from the forum pages and did not contain credit card information. Koei Tecmo added that he does not yet know who launched the cyber attack and that he considers that the probability that the leaks are related to a ransomware attack is low.
In addition to reporting data breaches to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the publisher has also temporarily shut down websites in the US and the UK. “Due to the possibility of an external cyber attack on this website, it is temporarily closed as we investigate the issue,” reads a single line of text that appears when you try to visit Koei Tecmo America website.
Unlike the recent extended cyber attack on Capcom in November, which has affected corporate information, such as sales reports and development documents, this data breach appears to be isolated from players’ emails and passwords.
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“Koei Tecmo apologizes for the concern and inconvenience it may cause its customers and business partners,” the editor wrote in his press release. “For those whose e-mail addresses have been leaked, Koei Tecmo is determined to take appropriate action and continue to act in good faith.”
Koei Tecmo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fix: The post has been updated to reflect the fact that the data breach news was first reported by the BleepingComputer data security website.