The developer of popular video game franchises took swift action to prevent the attack from spreading further across its systems
Japanese video game developer Capcom has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyberattack that affected some of its systems. The publisher of a long list of popular franchises, including Street Fighter and Resident Evil, first noticed signs of the intrusion on Monday before apparently taking swift action to prevent the attack from spreading across its systems.
“Beginning in the early morning hours of November 2, 2020 some of the Capcom Group networks experienced issues that affected access to certain systems, including email and file servers,” reads the notice on the company’s website.
While the company did not disclose the culprit behind the attack or the method through which its systems were breached, it did confirm that an unknown third-party gaining unauthorized access to its systems, which led Capcom to suspend some of its operations on its internal networks.
[Press Release]
“Notice Regarding Network Issues due to Unauthorized Access” added.https://t.co/A93ataMLtN— Capcom IR (@Capcom_IR) November 4, 2020
The game developer claimed that currently there is no evidence to suggest that any that customer information was compromised. Having said that, it may be too early to make any conclusions as the investigation is still ongoing.
The company went on to assure players that the incident had no bearing on the connections used to play the studio’s games online, nor did it hinder access to its websites. However, Capcom did issue an apology to any of its stakeholders who were inconvenienced by the situation.
The Japanese game publisher also shared an announcement warning that it won’t be responding to contact requests made through its investor relations form.
“We are currently unable to reply to inquiries and/or to fulfill requests for documents via this form following the network issues that began November 2, 2020,” said Capcom. In the meantime, the company is working with the police and authorities to investigate the incident, as well as to restore its systems to normal running order.
While the intruders don’t seem to have got their hands on people’s personally identifiable information, data harvested from security breaches is often used for phishing attacks. So if you have a Capcom account, you’d be well advised to remain vigilant.
With the gaming industry projected to be worth US$200 billion by 2023, it’s no wonder that both companies and players prove to be an attractive target for threat actors. Content delivery network provider Akamai stated that it observed over 10 billion credential-stuffing attacks within the industry over a two year period between July 2018 and June 2020, and over 3,000 distinct Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks targeting the gaming industry between July 2019 and June 2020.
