Nintendo next to get hacked, keeps data safe
updated 01:35 pm EDT, Sun June 5, 2011
Nintendo reports its own hacking incident
Lulz Security switched targets on Sunday and said it had attacked Nintendo's servers. The team successfully grabbed Nintendo's webserver configuration file and posted it online as proof. On Twitter, the group was emphatic that it "didn't mean any harm" with this breach and that Nintendo had already fixed the hole by the time it had gone public.
Nintendo separately confirmed the attack on Sunday and reiterated that the hack hadn't scraped personal information. Staff at the console maker "constantly monitor our security," it said.
The reasons behind switching to Nintendo weren't made clear with the breach, although it's more likely that the hack was more to prove it was possible than out of any ideological motivation. Nintendo has been criticized for clamping down on gray-area game loaders like R4 but typically hasn't taken the same aggressive attitude to copy protection as Sony.
While it's unclear how thoroughly tested Nintendo's security has been, its safety has been relatively high compared to Sony. The PS3's creator has been under near-constant attack, including not just the PSN breach but a succession of web hacks. In some of the cases, the hackers have discovered that sensitive personal information had been stored in clear text, giving any hacker full access to logins with little effort once past the initial defenses.
Public word of the hack is coming just two days before Nintendo's E3 keynote.
