Already in September 2K suffered a data breach when hackers somehow gained access to the company’s support desk, pretending to use official channels to obtain personal information. At the time, the company wasn’t sure exactly what had been stolen, but now it knows.
Above VGCFinally, an email was sent to those affected last week, stating that while there is “no indication that your financial information or passwords stored on our systems have been compromised,” the thieves was able to “receive some personal data recorded about you when you contacted us for support, including your email address, helpdesk ID number, gamertag and console details”.
This data was subsequently put up for sale online, so 2K is urging anyone who receives the October 6 email from them to do the usual things like reset passwords and keep an eye on their accounts for suspicious activity. Incredibly, so does 2K’s correspondence includes the following assurance:
Should I trust email from 2K?
Yes, our emails are safe again. However, we still recommend staying vigilant when communicating online across all platforms.
That didn’t help with this hack! This wasn’t a case of hackers posing as 2K support desk, they actually stole the keys to it and sent malicious links from the official email to people, so “stay alert” wouldn’t help much!
Anyone who received malicious emails from the account and then clicked on the links included were likely exposed to malware, which 2K said could largely be wiped out by… restarting your computer.
Based on additional investigative work and testing by our team, we believe that turning your device off and on provides additional protection from the malware.
If you were affected or just want to read 2K’s response, you can view the full notice here.
