Blizzard's Battle.net has been hacked

Blizzard has released a statement that there has been “unauthorized access to some Battle.net account information”, the umbrella player information and matchmaking system available for many of their games.  All regions with the exception of China have been affected by this, with the hackers of obtaining a list of several email addresses tied to the Battle.net accounts.

Other than email addresses, what the company describes as "additional information" has also been obtained from the North American servers.  These include "cryptographically scrambled versions of passwords (not actual passwords), the answer to a personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators”.

The publisher had this to say:

“It’s important to note that at this time, Blizzard does not believe this information alone is enough to gain access to Battle.net accounts.  Based on Blizzard’s investigation to this point, credit card and other customer payment data does NOT appear to have been accessed or affected. As a precaution, however, Blizzard encourages players to change their Battle.net password and any similar passwords used for other purposes.”

An update on Blizzard's website informed us that the breach happened this past weekend.  The post reiterates that the publisher does not believe the hack will enable full unauthorised access to specific accounts, players on the NA server will still be prompted to change their passwords and authentication details in an attempt to combat the security breach.