Details of an alleged Electronic Arts data breach on servers were revealed earlier this week. However, EA, a game developer and publisher known for widely-played titles such as Battlefield, NBA Live, Dragon Age, Dead Space and more, was quick to respond and deny the issue.
On Thursday, Oct. 15, CSO published a story detailing that an unknown party uploaded roughly EA 600 accounts, which contained emails, passwords and personal details, on Pastebin. Moreover, the accounts, which covered letters from A to F, had listings for major titles like Mass Effect and Star Wars Battlefront, which has recently concluded its beta testing phase where 9 million players participated. EA's other popular titles, such as those from the Battlefield franchise, The Sims, Need for Speed, Dead Space, and Titanfall, were some of those that were included in an extensive list of games.
CSO also detailed how an undisclosed gamer received several password reset notifications from his/her account in Dropbox and an unused Skype account around 3 p.m. of the said date.
"Once I'd taken a look at the dump it seems linked to my EA account — a full list of my games appears to be there, along with the email address on the account and password," the gamer told CSO.
However, EA promptly denied the alleged security breach, saying that no indications that would validate the issue were found. Moreover, the California-based gaming company noted that it is taking a look at the list and will secure any EA account listed on it.
"At this point, we have no indication that this list was obtained through an intrusion of our account databases," said EA in its response to CSO. "In an abundance of caution, we're taking steps to secure any account that has an EA or Origin user ID that matches the usernames on this list."
Nonetheless, EA reminds its player base to safeguard their usernames and passwords for every online community they have joined. However, those who are having doubts on whether their accounts are still secured or have already been compromised can check using "Have I been pwned?'s" free service.
