Trouble is brewing at Nintendo as it appears that a security breach has resulted in an estimated 160,000 Nintendo accounts being hacked. This news was made possible by Robert Sephazon who shared on his Twitter a translated version of the Japanese press release made by Nintendo.
According to Sephazon’s tweet, Nintendo revealed that “login IDs and passwords have been been obtained illegally by sources outside of our service, to impersonate users to access the Nintendo Network ID since the beginning of April."
From that statement alone, it appears that hackers were making use of older Nintendo Network ID information. This was then used to access network services on both Wii U and 3DS. It was then utilized to get access to associated Nintendo Accounts.
There is a high possibility that hackers could have gained credit card and Paypal account information from players. It’s also not impossible that these same hackers could have accessed personal information that could include complete names, dates of birth, and even email addresses.
In answer to this issue, Nintendo revealed that users are no longer going to be able to log-in to their respective Nintendo account using the Nintendo Network ID. In addition, Nintendo also said that “all passwords will be reset for Nintendo Network IDs and all other Nintendo accounts that may have been illegally accessed.”
What this means for Nintendo account holders is that they need to change their password. While one may think that this may be limited to Nintendo users in Japan, it may have a wider effect. In a report by Chris Kerr over at Gamasutra, he cited that this news was in fact “corroborated” by a post on the support page of Nintendo Europe.
The said post confirmed that Nintendo is no longer allowing account holders to use a Nintendo Network ID as a way to log-in. However, Nintendo Europe added that “all other options to sign-in to a Nintendo Account remain available.”
The Nintendo Europe post was pretty much like the Nintendo Japan press release. Users were to be contacted and informed about resetting their passwords, especially for those accounts that may have been hacked. Nintendo in general is also encouraging its users to make use of the two-step verification when logging-in to their account.
Nintendo revealed that they will continue to investigate the matter.
