Now Nintendo Admits It Was Hacked, Says No Customer Data Stolen

  • Share
  • Read Later

As this week’s E3 games conference and debut of Nintendo’s Wii successor looms, Nintendo’s admitting that Sony’s not the only victim of hacktivist ne’er-do-wells—yep, Nintendo was hacked, too.

Nintendo acknowledged a security breach in a statement yesterday, explaining that its U.S. servers came under cyber-fire a few weeks ago, but stressed that no personal user data was in breach. By comparison, Sony’s seen troves of sensitive personal data repeatedly stolen (and reportedly distributed) as hackers took turns assaulting the electronics conglomerate’s many corporate facets.

The PlayStation Network went down April 20th and didn’t fully return to life until last Wednesday, June 1st. And just last Friday, Sony was hacked again—specifically Sony Pictures, the company’s TV and film production unit—by a group calling itself “LulzSec,” as part of a campaign dubbed “Sownage.” (Get it? Sony + Ownage?) LulzSec had previously claimed credit for recent attacks on PBS and FOX.com.

(More on TIME.com: Sony Probing Claims Hackers Stole User Information)

The same group’s taking credit for the Nintendo hack, yesterday tweeting “Nintendo, we just got a config file and made it clear that we didn’t mean any harm,” while adding “Nintendo had already fixed it anyway.”

Nintendo’s statement jibes with the hack group’s claims.

“The server contained no consumer information,” said Nintendo in a press statement (via Reuters), adding “The protection of our customer information is our utmost priority.”

Unlike prior attacks by hack group “Anonymous,” which targeted Sony in retaliation for its lawsuit against PS3 root-key cracker George Hotz, LulzSec claims it’s hacking for the greater good.

“We love Nintendo and Sega, if anything we’d hack *for* them,” tweeted LulzSec just this morning. “If you’re listening Nintendo/Sega, you, you uh… you want Sony hacked more?

Wild guess here: I’m pretty sure Nintendo/Sega don’t.