Japanese publisher Koei Tecmo announced over the Christmas holidays that some personal data of 65,000 users of its English-language website had been hacked, leading the company to withdraw its websites from the United States and the United Kingdom. moment.
“Within the website operated by KTE, the ‘Forum’ page and the user’s registered information (approximately 65,000 entries) have been determined based on data that may have been incomplete,” Koei Tecmo announced. in a press release on December 25, it was first reported per BleepingComputer. “User data that can be filtered through piracy is perceived as the (optional) account names and related (encrypted) password and / or registered email address.”
The publisher, who is responsible for the Warrior of the Dynasty series, including several Musou derivations and the recent one Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity—wrote that the hack appeared to be isolated on the forum pages and did not contain credit card information. Koei Tecmo added that he still does not know who launched the cyberattack and that he believes the likelihood of leaks being related to a ransomware attack is low.
In addition to reporting non-compliance with the data in the EU 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 cyberattack on this website, it is temporarily closed while we investigate the issue,” reads a single line of text that appears when you try to visit the Koei Tecmo America website.
Unlike the recent extensive cyberattack on Capcom in November, which 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 this may cause to its customers and business partners,” the editor wrote in a press release. “For the people whose email addresses have been leaked, Koei Tecmo is determined to take appropriate action and act in good faith from now on.”
Koei Tecmo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Correction: The post has been updated to reflect the fact that the data security website BleepingComputer first reported news of the data breach.