13 million MapleStory players at risk after hack – casting a shadow over Nexon’s IPO

If you’re about to float your video game company on the stock exchange, probably the last thing you want is for a hacker to break into the personal details of some 13 million of your players.

But that’s exactly what has happened to South Korean firm Nexon, which runs the massively-popular MMORPG “MapleStory”.

A statement on Nexon’s website (in Korean), “apologises sincerely” for an intrusion on its backup database on 18 November, that the firm revealed to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) earlier today.

The stolen data included players’ names, user ids, resident registration number (the equivalent to a social security number) and password. Fortunately, passwords and resident registration number information are said to have been encrypted – but the firm is still advising players to check that they were not…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.