Battle.net users, it's time to change those passwords immediately

Battle.net, a gaming service by Blizzard Entertainment (Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft), has been hacked. Information like E-mail lists and passwords have been compromised, so if you’re a Battle.net user, it’s time to change your passwords immediately.

Wait a minute, I’m a Battle.net user… sheeyit! Hold a second while I change my password.

Okay, I’m back.

According to Blizzard, no financial information has been compromised. Here’s what Blizzard president Michael Morhaime had to say:

“This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.

At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.”

Chinese Battle.net users need not worry, since they weren’t affected. But if you’re in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America, your personal security question and mobile and dial-in authentication information were also compromised.

Blizzard says that the passwords should be hard to crack, but it recommends that we change our passwords anyway:

We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password.

Remember kids, don’t be lazy and use different passwords for each online account you have.

Source: Blizzard