Think back to 2007: Statistically, you were probably playing World of Warcraft’s The Burning Crusade, or maybe even Lord of the Rings, Vanguard, or Tabula Rasa, all brand-new that year. Me, I was deep in classic Guild Wars. And some of you maybe have been playing gPotato games like Flyff or Rappelz. I’m not judging you! But I do have some bad news for you all the same: Hacker watchdog Haveibeenpwned.com reports that gPotato suffered a major account data breach in 2007.
New breach: Gaming portal "gPotato" had 2.1M user accounts exposed in 2007. 60% were already in @haveibeenpwned https://t.co/hv1u9SEsMR
— Have I Been Pwned (@haveibeenpwned) September 24, 2016
“In July 2007, the multiplayer game portal known as gPotato suffered a data breach and over 2 million user accounts were exposed. The site later merged into the Webzen portal where the original accounts still exist today. The exposed data included usernames, email and IP addresses, MD5 hashes and personal attributes such as gender, birth date, physical address and security questions and answers stored in plain text.”
According to the site, the compromised data included “Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Physical addresses, Security questions and answers, Usernames, [and] Website activity.”
gPotato went on to host games like Luna, Aika, Allods Online, Prius, Drakensang, Battlestar Galactica Online, C9, and Uncharted Waters Online in later years before the North American/European merge with Webzen’s portal in May 2014. Since the breach is nine years old and many of the accounts had already been exposed to other hacks along the way, you’re probably fine — but just in case, you should shore up your account security all the same.
