Games publishing giant Ubisoft has been the victim of a a security breach, with hackers accessing personal player information. It says that all players should change their uPlay passwords.
In an email to its users, the France-based company has confirmed that usernames, email addresses and passwords have been compromised in the hack. It adds that no credit or debit card information has been accessed, however, as this is stored on a different server.
Ubisoft has not revealed how the breach occurred, citing "security reasons". The best known games in its portfolio include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell and Watch Dogs.
The warning email says: "We recently found that one of our websites was exploited to gain unauthorised access to some of our online systems. We instantly took steps to close off this access, investigate the incident and begin restoring the integrity of any compromised systems. During this process, we learned that data had been illegally accessed from our account database, including user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords." The email continues: "Please note that no personal payment information is stored with Ubisoft, meaning your debit/credit card information was safe from this intrusion."
"We are recommending that you change the password for your account," says the email, pointing to a short term link that allows users to do so immediately and adding that users should change passwords for other websites and services if they are similar to that of their Ubisoft account.
The breach is currently being investigated by Ubisoft's security team together with the authorities and cyber security experts. It comes two years after the biggest games industry breach to date … k on Sony's PlayStation network that resulted in millions of subscribers' passwords and credit card details being leaked.
