Important: We changed all of your Dtoid passwords, possible hacker activity

10:30 AM on 01.19.2009   |   Niero

124 comments

If you have a Dtoid account look for an email from me at 5am last night containing a new password -- last night someone posted a screenshot containing roughly 25 usernames and passwords which primarily contained the login information of Destructoid's own editorial team. It's safe to say that we may have had a hacker intrusion, so we changed everyone's info. You can change it again on your profile page if you'd like something more memorable.

When we brought the staff together last night to look at the incident we learned that many of those records appear to be out of date -- they had been changed some time ago or may have only affected forum users (phpBB, which uses a different system than our blogs) which has helped us narrow down their activity on our traffic logs. We are unsure if everyone's information was acquired but are taking all precautions possible and have shut down our forums for the time being, as well as replaced everyone's information with a random code/hash.

As a safety precaution we urge all users that have Dtoid comment accounts to update their Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Facebook, Myspace, and other passwords if they may have used this password on other web sites.  Even if you were not affected at all, take this as a sign from the heavens to tighten up your personal security policy.

No apology long or carefully worded can make this right, so let's move on to what we are doing next: Bringing in a security expert to perform a systems audit on our firewall, systems, and server software.  We are also offering a $1,000 cash reward to anyone that has any information on the incident to help IC3 (FBI's internet crime unit) prosecute this person -- after I kick their face in.

I'm terribly sorry about this. We're on it.