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1,800 Minecraft accounts have been compromised by hackers, with players’ emails and passwords leaked online.
According to a report in German publication Heise, as translated by The Guardian, the private details of each user has been published online in plain-text format.
This means that, potentially, others can now long into a player’s account and download the game on their own devices. These details could also be used to obtain access to accounts on other websites unrelated to Minecraft if affected players have used the same email and password.
It is not currently clear how hackers were able to obtain players’ account details, and whether more have been breached.
“This is a pretty small release of passwords compared to most,” said AppRiver security analyst Jonathan French.
“But at the moment, no one seems to be taking claim of it and there’s no information on how it was obtained. It could have been a hack, but it could have also been phishing. It’s hard to tell at this point. As with any login out there, people should be using unique passwords and cases like this just re-enforce that. If someone uses the same password everywhere, all it takes is one leak to possibly compromise a lot of things.”
