Sega has become the latest computer games giant to fall prey to hackers after warning users of its Sega Pass system that some of their personal information may have been stolen.
The company sent an email on Friday to say that email addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords had been accessed by hackers, but that no financial information was at risk.
The Sega Pass system was taken offline on Thursday and all users' passwords have been reset. Customers have been advised to be on the alert for suspicious emails asking for further personal information.
The hacking group Lulz Security appeared to deny involvement, despite leading a wave of recent cyber-attacks such as that on Sony. A tweet using the account @LulzSec said: "@Sega – contact us. We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you."
In April, Sony had data stolen from the 77 million users of the PlayStation network, one of the worst security breaches of its kind. There was then a second attack when another 24.6 million computer game users might have had their personal details stolen.
Personal information and passwords were taken in another hack on Codemasters earlier this month, but not financial details.
The email from Sega to customers said: "We have identified that unauthorised entry was gained to our Sega Pass database. "We immediately took the appropriate action to protect our consumers' data and isolate the location of the breach. We have launched an investigation into the extent of the breach of our public systems.
"We have identified that a subset of Sega Pass members emails addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were obtained. To stress, none of the passwords obtained were stored in plain text.
"Please note that no personal payment information was stored by Sega as we use external payment providers, meaning your payment details were not at risk from this intrusion."
