One of the forum websites maintained by game developer Epic Games has been hacked and the attackers might have gained access to sensitive data.
Epic Games is best known for video games such as Unreal Tournament, Gears of War, and Infinity Blade.
According to an email sent out by the company to forum users, the hackers may have accessed usernames, email addresses, passwords, and dates of birth provided at registration.
The forum does not store any financial details, but users have been warned that the information they have sent or stored using the breached website might have been compromised.
The affected forum, located at forums.epicgames.com, covers games like Bulletstorm, Gears of War, Infinity Blade, UDK, and prior Unreal Tournament games. The company has pointed out that Unreal Engine 4, the new Unreal Tournament, and Fortnite are covered on different forums, which are not impacted by this incident.
The hacked Epic Games website is currently down for maintenance, but a snapshot of the website from July 13 shows that the forum has roughly 263,000 registered members.
Epic Games will reset user passwords as soon as access to the website is restored. In the meantime, gamers who used the same password for multiple online services have been advised to change their passwords on those sites. Users have also been warned about phishing attempts.
The company has not provided any details on how the attack might have taken place, but says it’s working with a security firm to determine the nature of the breach.
It’s not uncommon for malicious actors to target forum sites, especially ones that store the details of a large number of users.
Many of these attacks rely on vulnerabilities in the forum software. In the case of the Epic Games forum, it was powered by vBulletin 4.2.0, a version that is known to be plagued by some serious flaws.
As security expert Graham Cluley pointed out, it’s also possible that the attackers breached the forum by stealing credentials associated with privileged accounts. Whichever the case may be, Epic Games has promised to share more information on the incident once the website is restored.