A little over a week ago, we reported that unconfirmed information strongly hinted that Capcom had just been just been hit by a huge ransomware attack. Now, at the time, while Capcom had confirmed that something had happened, they were a little reluctant to go into detail.
Well, following an official update on their website, not only has the game publisher now confirmed the incident, but they have also revealed that masses of information, including insanely sensitive information, may have been compromised in the attack.
Capcom Confirms Ransomware Attack
As part of the official report, which you can read in full here (grab a coffee because it’s a good few thousand words), the company has confirmed that as part of the breach the following information is either confirmed or suspected as having been compromised:
- Personal information on current and former employees including job applicants (up to 125,000 people)
- Financial records
- Sales reports
- Shareholder information/details
- Human resources information
- Customer service information (up to 134,000 people, and this could include you)
Of these, from a strictly consumer stand-point, the latter aspect is the most worrying as Capcom has cited that this ‘customer’ information may have included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and presumably anything involving your potential personal interactions with the company.
Put simply, if you opened a support ticket up on something like Street Fighter V, your information may have been leaked!
Yikes!
In confirming the incident, while Capcom has now acknowledged much of the potentially compromised data, this is still an on-going investigation and, put simply, even they likely won’t know the full extent of how bad it was for at least a few more weeks yet. Given that the report indicates that around 1TB of information was successfully stolen (and/or encrypted), however, it is understood that Capcom is not going to pay the $11m ransom from the hacker (or group) to get it back.
So, while this is clearly a huge problem, they can at least be applauded for being, relatively speaking, open about it and, more so, for not buckling in to just paying the ransom and hoping this would quietly go away!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
