To all Battle.net account holders, now might be a good time to change
your account password. In a post from the Blizzard website, Blizzard
President Mike Morhaine said that a network breach was detected this week.
However, Blizzard found no evidence to suggest that user
account information has been compromised, although a list of email addresses
for global Battle.net users excluding China was accessed. In addition, the answer to the personal
security question and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators
were also accessed. Finally, “cryptographically scrambled versions” of
Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American
(which includes Malaysian players) servers were taken.
However, unlike the lax security measures taken by both Amazon
and Apple, the information that were accessed are not enough for hackers to
gain access to individual accounts. Blizzard uses Secure Remote Password
protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to “make it
extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each
password would have to be deciphered individually”.
Therefore, while there is a high chance that these
Battle.net accounts might not be hacked into, some preventive measures such as
changing your account passwords will eliminate the chances of your account
being hacked completely.
(Source: Kotaku, Engadget)
