EA kept quiet on Real Racing dev's forum hack
Publisher acknowledges Firemonkeys forums were hacked a year after the fact, says "small number" of user emails potentially taken
It's become common practice for companies whose customers' information is stolen by hackers to inform people about such lapses in a timely fashion. However, Kotaku Australia is reporting that Electronic Arts kept quiet about a security breach on the forums of Real Racing 3 developer Firemonkeys for a full year.
According to the site's source, hackers took 40,000 usernames and associated passwords from the developer's forums in a September 2013 attack, and EA told the studio not to inform the community of the hack.
"EA Firemonkeys became aware of a cyber attack on a stand-alone Firemonkeys forum in September 2013," an EA representative told the site when asked for comment. "Firemonkeys took immediate action by shutting down the forums and taking the server in question offline to prevent potential misuse. An investigation determined that a small number of customer email addresses were potentially obtained, but revealed no evidence of other information being accessed including passwords, names, security questions, payment information or any other sensitive data that could permit access to an online account. To be clear, no EA systems or databases were affected outside of the singular Firemonkeys forum. Firemonkeys took swift and appropriate action under the circumstances to address the issue."