Two days ago, reports from multiple public gaming figures suggesting that Activision, the makers and promoters of the wildly popular Call of Duty franchise, is witnessing one of the biggest hacks in its history. According to these reports, over half a million people with accounts on Activision were breached – an action that could have been sensitive enough, since these accounts often include personal and sensitive information such as addresses, emails and contact numbers, as well as credit card data. Yesterday, Activision issued a statement playing down the hack. However, what’s concerning is that Activision did not entirely deny that the hack happened at all.
“Reports suggesting Activision Call of Duty accounts have been compromised are not accurate. We investigate all privacy concerns. As always we recommend that players take precaution to protect their Activision accounts, as well as any online accounts, at all times. You will receive emails when major changes are made to your Call of Duty accounts. If you did not make these changes, please be sure to follow the steps provided,” Activision Support’s official statement read on Twitter, enclosed with a step-by-step link on how to enable stronger security protocol on Activision accounts.
However, it is important to note that Activision has regarded the reports about a breach in the company as “not accurate”, but not denied them entirely. Earlier this week, popular gaming content creators posted on September 20 that thousands of Activision accounts were being compromised, and the hacker(s) in question were seemingly posting private information of gamers on public forum. A popular YouTube personality, who went by his online name ‘oRemyy’, had originally posted about the hack, calling it the “biggest hack in Call of Duty history” and claimed that he had “never seen a hack this badly [sic] on such a large scale”.
Given that the reports were rather widespread, it seems unlikely that no incident happened at all. Adding to that now is Activision’s statement, which sounds very carefully phrased so as to play down the impact. According to Call of Duty’s publishers, one may receive a notification email alerting them of any changes or logins made by a hacker, all of which somewhat suggests that a breach may have indeed occurred, but perhaps not at the scale in which it was publicised. As a result, Activision may not have issued an acknowledgement of the hack, but also steered clear of denying it entirely.
Irrespective of the hack, if you have an account registered with Activision for Call of Duty, it is crucial that you try logging back in to your account to check if everything is in order. As always, it is advisable to change your existing password now and set a stronger one, and also enable two-factor authentication to make your account safer. Reports of the Activision hack bring back memories of the recent Twitter hack, which was also one of the biggest and most impactful cyber attacks on public personalities in recent times.
Thankfully, going by reports so far, it does not seem that the Activision hack, if at all, was anywhere close to being as impactful as the targeted attack on Twitter.
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