A cybersecurity incident has impacted Zynga Inc., a popular social media video game company. According to information security specialists, the incident has compromised the personal information of nearly 220 million users worldwide.
Through an official statement, the company reported that Gonsticplayers, a hacker from Pakistan managed to compromise the security of Words with Friends, a game developed by the company, gaining access to a database with more than 218 million records of players. Gnosticplayers has been involved in various hacking incidents over the past few months.
“We found that a threat actor was able to
illegally access details of multiple player accounts. The incident was
immediately investigated in collaboration with leading authorities and information
security firms,” the Zynga statement says.
The company added that the investigation has
not yet been concluded, but the possibility that the hacker had accessed the
victims’ financial information has been ruled out. However, access to some of
the compromised accounts has been detected. “We are taking some security
measures against these invalid logins,” the statement says.
In one of his previous attacks, Gnosticplayers
managed to hack the contents of more than 25 million people, collected by at
least six large companies in the entire world. The hacker has been active in
multiple dark web forums, offering this stolen information for 1.3 Bitcoin
(just under $5k USD).
Information security specialists from the
International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) assure that Gnosticplayers
controlled an account at Dream
Market, the popular forum for sale on dark web. Through this forum, the
hacker offered three rounds of data stolen from different websites.
Gnosticplayers was subsequently held responsible for a considerable data breach
in the Canva web design platform; Personal details of more than 130 million
users of the Australian website were compromised, including full names, email
addresses and country of residence.
