DayZ forums hacked – usernames, passwords and emails exposed

Remember DayZ? It was once upon a time the biggest thing in video games, the perfect example of early access games offering the sort of emergent storytelling other games could only wish for. Unless you’re actively in the loop, it seems like there’s been little development on that front, with nary a bit of news about the standalone version of the game, or its promised console release.

DayZ is back in the news, but it’s unfortunately not of the pleasant sort. It seems the game’s forums have been hacked spilling out usernames, emails and passwords of everybody’s who’s signed up.

Bohemia interactive confirmed as much by e-mail:

“Greetings,

A security incident occurred on forums.dayzgame.com recently. According to our investigation all usernames, emails and passwords from forums.dayzgame.com were accessed and downloaded by hackers.

While the passwords were not stored in plain text, but in a more secure form, it is highly recommended that if you have used the same password elsewhere you change it immediately on all applicable websites and services.

We would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused, and share with you one of the major changes planned in order to mitigate similar risks in the future. We will be replacing the IPBoards login system with Bohemia Account within the next two weeks. As Bohemia Account is a separate custom-built service currently used by Bohemia Interactive Forums and Store, it offers much better security and its use should prevent similar incidents going forward.

We ask for your patience over the next few days and weeks as we implement this and other security overhauls, as there are likely to be service interruptions and forum unavailability from time to time. In particular, the forums will be down until migration to the Bohemia Account is complete. We will keep you up to date on vital info and scheduled down-time on the site itself and via our Twitter.

Yours sincerely,
Bohemia Interactive”

Unfortunately for those who are affected, Bohemia has instituted system-wide maintenance, so even if you wanted to change your pass words right now, you’re unable to.

Last Updated: February 5, 2016