A group of game developers in Austria say someone figured out the password to their PayPal account and used it to buy themselves a bunch of new PlayStation 4s.
The folks at Broken Rules, perhaps best known for the recent Wii U game Chasing Aurora, are in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign for their newest project, Secrets of Raetikon. Yesterday, they noticed that someone had used their PayPal account to order three new PS4s, which might have been kinda cool if it was one of them, and not some hacker who got his or her hands on the company’s password.
Marketing man Martin Pichlmair (on the left up there) said he was bummed out about the hack.
“The amount was significant but not huge — a few thousand dollars,” Pichlmair told me in an email. “Still, it’s the last thing you need during a crowdfunding campaign.”
Pichlmair says it looks like PayPal has frozen the charges and will be refunding them the money. He thinks the hackers nabbed their password during the big Adobe hack last month, and he’s hoping that everything gets sorted out soon.
“This does in fact feel like someone breaking into your house,” said Pichlmair. “It teaches us to use different passwords for different services from now on and so it should teach you and your readers.”
Comments
9 responses to “Indie Developers Say Hackers Robbed Them To Buy Three PS4s”
Or, since the passwords weren’t leaked, just the hints, it should teach you not to make your hints obvious
Or, since the hashed passwords were leaked, don’t reuse passwords.
The hash hasn’t been cracked yet, so the “hacking” was probably just a correct, educated guess based on an obvious hint. So both
Not cracked yet (that we know of) but due to the way Adobe encrypted, they only need to know the encryption key, and every single password is there for the taking. Instead of having to crack each hash individually.
I get angsty on password stuff, yes.
I know. It’s why I’m now using LastPass
And use different passwords for your banking!
Still, poor guys.
While I feel sorry for them, this is just another example of why you don’t use simple or easy to guess passwords. Mix it up with numbers, letters, capitals, and symbols. I know such passwords are harder to remember, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
With passwords should have one good password that you dont reuse for major accounts like banks and Paypal. There’s also something called 2 factor authentication, which Paypal do offer. Should definately enable that.