The creators of Unreal Engine are the latest victims of internet hackers according to an email sent to their forum users yesterday. According to Epic, registration information including usernames, passwords, email addresses and dates of birth may have been obtained during the intrusion.
Epic has taken the forums offline and made the standard recommendation that users change passwords on other sites if they use the same password they used for the Epic forums. The forums affected relate to Bulletstorm, Gears of War, Infinity Blade, UDK, and older Unreal Tournament titles. The forums for Unreal Engine 4, Fortnite and the new Unreal Tournament were separate and are not impacted by the hack.
Epic now joins the long and distinguished list of hacking victims in the gaming space in recent years. In 2011 Sony's Playstation Network was taken down for a couple of weeks due to hackers. Recently a teenager in Finland was convicted of 50,700 counts of cyber crime in connection with Lizard Squad's Christmas hack of both the PSN and Xbox Live.
Epic says in their letter dated July 14 that they had "just discovered" the hack but does not specify if the hack just occurred, or if they had only recently discovered that it had happened at some point in the past. If Epic was aware of anything being done with user data they would almost certainly have said something so it's not likely that's been the case. It's possible email addresses could be used in phishing attempts so users should be especially vigilant.