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Nearly 2 Million Users Affected By New Breach At Square Enix

Japanese gaming giant is hacked for the second time this year

Dec 19, 2011 | 02:22 AM | 

By Tim Wilson
Dark Reading
Square Enix, a major gaming company in both Japan and the United States, stated last week that attackers "may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server," forcing the company to take its 1.8 million-user members service offline in both Japan and the U.S.

"We have reason to believe that unknown parties may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server related to the free Square Enix Members service offered in North America and Japan," the company said in a statement about the Square Enix breach.

The attackers might have gotten customer names and phone numbers. The server in question doesn't store credit card information, according to Square Enix, so "there is no possibility of any credit card information leak."

"We are yet to learn whether illegal access was gained to our clients’ information," said a Square Enix spokesperson. "But we have asked our customers to be aware of the incident in case they receive suspicious messages using our name."

In May, the firm acknowledged that hackers had broken into its system and might have acquired 25,000 customers' email addresses as well as 350 job applicants’ resumes.

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