Electronic Arts has suffered a major security breach when someone uploaded a document on Pastebin that contained private personal details including email addresses and passwords.
The document was removed, but it had hundreds of Origin accounts that began with letters A through F, as well as registered Mass Effect and Star Wars Battlefront users.
An ex-Origin employee, Sam Houston, is speculating that the document was the result of a hack into Electronic Arts’ databases, stating, ”Gamers are often targeted with attacks, and with EA’s accounts tied into all of their games and their Origin e-commerce site, a gamer’s EA account can be very valuable.”
Houston added, ”Gaining access to an EA account would enable a hacker to play any of their PC games purchased through Origin, and could potentially be used to play on a gamer’s account on a game connected via the EA account system. Those accounts are valuable not only for financial gain, but also for harassing or impersonating users.”
EA’s senior director John Reseburg doubts this, stating “At this point, we have no indication that this list was obtained through an intrusion of our account databases,” and EA has taken action to secure the exposed accounts. ”In an abundance of caution, we’re taking steps to secure any account that has an EA user ID that matches the usernames on this list.”
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