Square Enix confirms Deus Ex hack

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 13 May, 2011

"Up to" 25,000 email addresses obtained.

Square Enix has confirmed reports that its official Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Eidos Montreal websites have been hacked.

A Square Enix spokesperson told Eurogamer this afternoon that 350 resumes from people interested in jobs at Eidos Montreal "may have been accessed", and up to 25,000 email addresses were obtained.

"Square Enix can confirm a group of hackers gained access to parts of our Eidosmontreal.com website as well as two of our product sites," Square Enix said.

"We immediately took the sites offline to assess how this had happened and what had been accessed, then took further measures to increase the security of these and all of our websites, before allowing the sites to go live again.

"Eidosmontreal.com does not hold any credit card information or code data, however there are resumes which are submitted to the website by people interested in jobs at the studio.

"Regrettably up to 350 of these resumes may have been accessed, and we are in the process of writing to each of the individuals who may have been affected to offer our sincere apologies for this situation.

"In addition, we have also discovered that up to 25,000 email addresses were obtained as a result of this breach. These email addresses are not linked to any additional personal information. They were site registration email addresses provided to us for users to receive product information updates.

"No dissemination or misappropriation of any other personal information has been identified at this point.

"We take the security of our websites extremely seriously and employ strict measures, which we test regularly, to guard against this sort of incident."

For a brief period on Wednesday the sites in question displayed a defacement banner that read "Owned by Chippy1337" along with several names and hacker handles of those supposedly responsible for the break-in.

According to logs lifted from the chatroom used by those responsible, the hackers are discussing whether to leak the "src".

Some were concerned that this related to the source code of Deus Ex: Human Revolution itself, but Eurogamer was told by one of the people embroiled in the hack that this is not the case.

Nor is the Deus Ex hack the work of a splinter cell of Anonymous, the group blamed by Sony for last month's devastating PlayStation Network compromise. It is allegedly the work of Gnosis, the group responsible for the hack of Gawker late last year.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (26) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • harzo #1 1 year ago

    I'd love to 'hack' their balls off with a rusty saw.

    Wankers.

  • sfp_noodle #2 1 year ago

    Oh fuck off you mother fucking, donkey raping hacker bastards!

    /apologies for my French

  • eviroboy #3 1 year ago

    Tis the season it would appear. I wonder what next year will bring.

  • Markusdragon #4 1 year ago

    350 resumes? Now there's something for games bloggers to trawl through looking for unannounced and or cancelled games...

  • the_dudefather #5 1 year ago

    I hope that they are turned orange in hue, and may their heads fall off at an awkward moment

  • lcmnick #6 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 12:48:44 14-04-2012

  • Cadence #7 1 year ago

    That trailer is awesome!

  • drew327 #8 1 year ago

    Mini party at Sony for a bit of heat off them?

  • Nithron #9 1 year ago

    This is pretty douchebaggy. I always find it kinda hard to judge this sorta hackers though, as they're probably 14. Wasn't everyone a douchebag at 14?

  • TheEarlOfZinger #10 1 year ago

    Yes, I often look back on how I used to steal peoples personal details / identitys when I was 14.

    *facepalm*

  • Nithron #11 1 year ago

    @TheEarlOfZinger

    Same. Those were the days...

    No, what I mean is, they seem to have hacked it, defaced the site with some retarded childish group name and then stolen some stuff that's not really useful for any malicious purposes. I guess they could sell the emails to spammers, but that's pretty weak sauce, aint it? It looked more to me like some kids basically arsing around.

  • TheEarlOfZinger #12 1 year ago

    I doubt it's kids. How many 14 year olds could hack Eidos' website, seriously?!

  • SClaw #13 1 year ago

    EG, did you just reword the original story slightly? This is amlost exactly the same as earlier, you filthy Google News whores.

  • BuddyChrist #14 1 year ago

    The Consumer will end up paying for their own data to be protected through markup.

    Why don't they find terrorists, pull apart dangerous antisocial websites, or disconnect the Belgians from the net completely: they work off of EU loopholes to operate mass scamming, let alone the illicit material they generate....

  • HyperTails #15 1 year ago

    Its getting completely out of hand. Sony, now Eidos. Whose next? Are the hackers going to go after BioWare because some people didn't like Mass Effect 2? Or maybe Capcom for Resident Evil 5?

    Hope the these guys get a LONG jail sentence and are made to repeatedly drop the soap.

  • kangarootoo #16 1 year ago

    @Nithron

    I share the same general rule as you (giving the benefit of the doubt, you might say), that I always assume a nobhead on the internet is about 14. Man, if I had a £ for everytime I've been wrong. The funny part is how people will proudly state "Hah, I'm actually 32. Shows how much you know" as if that makes their childish behaviour somehow better.

    I'd bet most of these people are in their mid-late 20s at best. Its pityful, really.

  • arcam #17 1 year ago

    Ryan Cleary, the guy who hijacked the AnonOps IRC channels, and whose name appeared on the hacked Eidos site is 17.

    Kayla, who made the breakthrough in the infamous HBGary hack and gained access to the company servers was a 16 year old girl.

  • hiddenranbir #18 1 year ago

    Anonymous is doing this all for you. THEY ARE LEGION.


    Eye-roll.

  • HASJ #19 1 year ago

    I find this quite marvelous!
    Guess it's a new trend to make your online services vulnerable!

  • kangarootoo #20 1 year ago

    @arcam

    Then these very clever young people are wasting themselves. Utterly wasting themselves.

    (You know you are getting old when you use the term "young people". I'll be suggesting they "apply themselves" next, just you wait).
    Edited by kangarootoo at 13/05/11 @ 17:10

  • Nithron #21 1 year ago

    As arcam put it, some pretty young people pull of some pretty impressive stuff.

    So they're not literally 14, but i'd still give 16 year olds a bit slack in the "being a douchebag" department.

    It seems hard to believe that people who are basically still kids are capable of such things, but then there's some very smart kids out there, and some very bad security.

  • silversun #22 1 year ago

    Thia is getting stupid now.
    Just read the randy post about ps3, then saw that this happened.
    Did this just effect job applicant or all people that used the Eidosmontreal website?

    The whole industry needs to look at secure online methods i think and how they can improve.

    WOW and ff11 online both use security tokens , maybe these are a good secure methods or something else physical.
    Edited by silversun at 13/05/11 @ 19:29

  • silversun #23 1 year ago

    "Then these very clever young people are wasting themselves. Utterly wasting themselves."

    Your right , they should be applying for the jobs they are accessing data on , to any hacker involved in these recent situations, i say go and work in the industry rather than waste your talent and maybe end up in a worse situation down the line.

    Edited by silversun at 13/05/11 @ 23:51

  • shadow1979 #24 1 year ago

    The only thing I stole when I was young was porn.. oh wait..

  • filipo #25 1 year ago

    Idiots put their full names on there.

    If anyone knows these people, please punch them in the dick.

  • TheDarkFurie #26 1 year ago

    All these bloody hackers around and yet no-one has defaced these shoe sales sites that keep spamming everywhere on the web slightly game related (because gamers would go outside more often if they could find affordable shoes). You kids want the world to herald you for your skills? Make sure these spamming twats lose their site repeatedly.

    On topic, I blame abstinence for this. Those of us who actually had sex when we were younger never had the time to pull this kind of crap. Well, a few minutes less time, anyway...