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Zynga Games Has Data Breach Including Personal Information

By October 14, 2019May 9th, 2022Cybersecurity

Zynga is a wildly successful gaming company with a number of hit titles under their belt including FarmVille, Words with Friends, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, and Café World.

Their titles boast more than a billion players, worldwide, which is a number that would make most gaming outfits green with envy.

Naturally, their success has painted a giant target on the company. Recently, a Pakistani hacker going by the alias Gnosticplayers has claimed that he successfully breached Words With Friends and made off with a massive database containing information on more than 218 million users.

It doesn’t appear to be an idle boast.  Recently Zynga acknowledged that they had been breached and that a variety of data was stolen from certain players of Draw Something and Words With Friends.

For his part, Gnosticplayers has been quite forthcoming, even providing The Hacker News with a sample of the stolen data, which includes:

  • Player name
  • Email address
  • Login ID
  • Hashed password
  • Password reset token (if present)
  • Facebook ID (if connected)
  • User Zynga account ID

He also boasted that he made off with data belonging to some 7 million Draw Something users, and in this case, revealed that the data he stole contained plain text passwords.

Zynga issued a statement which reads, in part, as follows:

“An investigation was immediately commenced, leading third-party forensics firms were retained to assist and we have contacted law enforcement. As a precaution, we have taken steps to protect these users’ accounts from invalid logins.  We plan to notify players as the investigation proceeds further.”

If you play either Words With Friends or Draw Something, you should change your password immediately and be on the lookout for phishing scams aimed at you in a bid to try and extract even more information from you.

Jason Manteiga

Jason J. Manteiga, Vice President of Olmec Systems, has been part of the company for over the past 20 years. He believes that having a great work environment and supportive team, is the ultimate key to success. Since being in the IT realm for over 25 years, Jason, along with Olmec Systems, has been on the Inc. 5000 “List of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies” and Channel Futures MSP 501 “Top Managed Service Providers in North America,” along with other awards and nominations. Jason earned his Bachelor Degree in Information Systems from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He also holds certifications in Microsoft MCSE, VMWare VCP, and Cisco CCNA. In his spare time, Jason is a contributor for The Center for Social & Legal Research (Privacy Exchange) and a member of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce. His hobbies include cycling and kayaking. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife, two daughters and son.