Hackers never let folks catch a break, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games are always a target for heinous acts of data collecting. The latest victim? Square Enix’s super popular Final Fantasy XIV, which the company announced yesterday is currently experiencing “an attack by a third party” trying to get into its account management system. The solution? The company is advising people to go into their profiles and change their passwords.
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Square Enix took to the game’s official website to deliver the news. In the blog post, the company said that this third-party entity is “using a combination of email addresses and passwords that appear to have been obtained from other online services of other companies” to pry its way into Square Enix’s account management system. It doesn’t seem as if any information has been leaked yet. However, Square Enix said that, alongside investigating the effects of the attack by “restricting access to accounts that we believe may have been compromised by unauthorized users,” you should really consider changing your account password. The company’s so adamant about this, in fact, that it’s sending out emails to potentially at-risk users, so you might wanna check your inbox.
“Using the same email address and password combination for your Square Enix account as you do for other online services increases the possibility of a third party gaining unauthorized access to your Square Enix account,” the company said, encouraging players to go change their passwords now. “Furthermore, even if your email address and password combination is not identical to those used for other services, there is still a high risk of your account being compromised if your password contains easily discernible patterns or sequences of characters, such as your date of birth.”
Kotaku has reached out to Square Enix for comment.
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While Square Enix’s blog post states that the game is experiencing “rising numbers of unauthorized access attempts,” the exact scale of the effort to break into the account management system is unknown. With approximately 19 million active accounts and roughly 40 million subscribers registered in Final Fantasy XIV, there are a lot of potential vulnerabilities for the company to be concerned about. If the attack persists, the company said it may initiate a password reset for all Square Enix accounts. Big deal stuff, especially considering your Square Enix account holds tons of personal information like your date of birth and your payment details. So if you’re an FFXIV player, changing your password right about now would probably be a good idea. And be sure to enable two-factor authentication on your account for added security.