Hacking spreads to Nintendo and Epic websites

Two further games companies have become embroiled in a new hacking craze sweeoing the games industry.

On Friday Gears of War developer Epic admitted that it was forced to deactivate its web sites and forums for a limited amount of time following an illegitimate hack.

"Our Epic Games web sites and forums were recently hacked. After some downtime, they’re back up and running now," Epic founder Tim Sweeney stated.

"The hackers may have obtained the email addresses and encrypted passwords of forum users. Plaintext passwords weren’t revealed, but it’s possible that those passwords could be obtained by a brute-force attack on the encrypted passwords.

"Therefore, we have reset all passwords. The Unreal Developer Network (UDN) hasn’t been compromised. Thankfully, none of our web sites ask for, or store, credit card information or other financial data.

"We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and appreciate everyone’s patience as we wrestle our servers back under control."

Then over the weekend Nintendo discovered what it is calling "a possible phishing threat". As a consequence it then shut down the European Nintendo website and its Club Nintendo portal.

More details on these two stories can be found on MCV