PlayStation, Windows Live Gamers Hit By New Passwords Leak

Online gamers are being encouraged to change their passwords yet again following a major leak of thousands of username and password details.

Hacker group Derptrolling targeted users of the PlayStation PSN network, Windows Live, and 2K Games customers, with thousands of login details, including both passwords and usernames, posted on filesharing websites Pastebin.

The document includes usernames and passwords for 2,131 PSN users, 1,473 Windows Live users and 2,000 2K Game Studios users.

Hacked

“Dear Internet,” it reads. “The following is a very small portion of Lord Gaben and the rest of his crew’s glorious raids across the high seas of the Internet.”

Derptrolling first hit the headlines last month, when a CNET interview with one of the group’s members reported that it was in possession of, “around 7 million usernames and passwords”. These included 2 million Comcast accounts, 620,000 Twitter accounts, 1.2 million credentials belonging to the CIA domain, 200,000 Windows Live accounts, and 3 million Facebook accounts , the member said.

However the Derptrolling spokesman was keen to stress that the group did not seek to cause harm people by leaking the data, saying that its aim was to force companies to improve their security against such attacks.

The leak is the latest in a series to affect online gamers, who have found themselves to be a popular target for cybercriminals in recent times. Most notably, an attack upon the PSN network in 2011 affected up to 77 million user accounts, forcing Sony to spend millions in compensation to users who had their details stolen.

Last year, it was also revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s GGCHQ infiltrated a number of popular video games and online gaming services, including World of Warcraft, Second Life and Xbox Live in the hope of obtaining intelligence.

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