Data Breach Warning For 200 Million Android And iOS Gamers

By Davey Winder for Forbes
Monday, September 30, 2019

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Social gaming, like most things to do with smartphones, is big business. Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) is one of the more prominent players in this market sector. Online gaming revenues at Zynga were $671 million (£541 million) in 2018 and are expected to grow to $920 million (£747 million) in 2019. When one of the big social gaming players with a market capitalization of $5.499 billion (£4.468 billion) and more than a billion players gets hacked, then it's big news. After a pretty low key September 12 disclosure from Zynga that some player account information may have been accessed illegally by "outside hackers," an investigation was started, external forensic firms called in to help and law enforcement contacted. Then things went quiet. Until now. A cybercriminal allegedly behind the Collection #1 and Collection #2 data dumps at the start of the year, going by the name of Gnosticplayers, has now claimed to have breached the data of more than 200 million Android and iOS players of Zynga games. Here's what is known so far.

What do the security experts say?

Ilia Kolochenko, founder and CEO of web security company ImmuniWeb, said that "the information reportedly stolen does not give an immense 'marge de maneuver' to the attackers; however, all potential victims should remain vigilant when handling any incoming emails or messages." Kolochenko also said that it would be "premature to derive any categorical conclusion about the true origins and scope of the breach before technical investigation is over." Read Full Article