According to recent reports, over half-a-million Activision Accounts may have been breached, with log-in details, including passwords, being leaked publicly. Activision Accounts are primarily used to track progress for the publisher’s ultra-popular Call of Duty games, although other Activision titles, like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, may prompt players to sign up as well.
The Activision security breach was first reported Sunday evening by Call of Duty insiders like Okami and TheGamingRevolution, who described the hacks an ongoing thing.
Activision accounts are apparently being leaked so change your password, although that might not even help because they’re apparently generating 1,000 accounts every 10 minutes.
— TheGamingRevolution (@TheGamingRevo3) September 20, 2020
While we don’t know exactly how the hackers gained access to the accounts, but likely they just used a brute-force method, as Activision Accounts do not offer two-factor authentication. Numerous Call of Duty players are reporting not being able to get into their Activision Accounts due to hackers accessing them and changing their passwords.
As of this monent, it’s unknown if the hacks are still ongoing or what the status of affected accounts is, as Activision has yet to release any kind of statement on the matter, and those who initially revealed what was going on haven’t revealed any new information. Needless to say, if you do play any Activision games, you should check on your account now – you can’t turn on 2FA sadly, but you should at least change your password and make sure it’s different than the passwords attached to other sensitive things (your email, bank account, ect.) Also, unlink Battlenet, PSN, Xbox, and social media accounts from your Activision Account.
This isn’t the first time these sort of publisher-specific accounts have been breached (Nintendo suffered a fairly major hack recently). It’s disappointing that publishers are so insistent that players sign up for these things, yet often don’t provide proper security. I’ll update this story if and when Activision acknowledges their security breach.