[BreachExchange] Nintendo Switch hack: Company finds further 140, 000 IDs may have been breached

[Destry Winant]

https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/gaming/nintendo-switch-hack-breach-account-id-a4463551.html.

Nintendo's security breach in April might have affected more accounts
than previously thought.

Earlier this year Nintendo confirmed that hundreds of thousands of
Nintendo Network IDs had been compromised. At the time, the company
reported that 160,000 accounts had been illegally accessed.

Following an investigation and subsequent follow-up report which was
posted today on Nintendo's UK support site, it seems that more
Nintendo IDs were compromised than originally thought.

This update explains that possibly a further 140,000 accounts may have
bee hacked. This would bring the total of affected Nintendo accounts
to 300,000.

Nintendo was quick to mention that it believes less than 1 per cent of
these account breaches led to any fraudulent purchases.

As a further precaution, Nintendo will soon contact users about
resetting passwords for Nintendo Network IDs and Nintendo Accounts
that it has reasons to believe were accessed without authorisation.

Nintendo Switch hack: Company confirms attack on thousands of accounts

While that may be the case, the hackers did gain access to peoples
login credentials to Nintendo's online services.

These accounts have personal information in like your email address
and date of birth.

Nintendo Network IDs (NNID) was the usual way to log in to Nintendo
Online and has been kept around to make logging into your account much
easier.

In light of the hack in April, however, Nintendo said it would scrap
NNID logins entirely, asking you to sign up with an email address.

Just like before, Nintendo has reset the password of the 140,000
Nintendo Network IDs that were impacted.

Nintendo is reportedly still in the process of giving out refunds to
people who have things bought on their accounts.

In response to our request for a statement, Nintendo pointed us
towards their updated page on the English Nintendo website.

The statement in full reads:

"While we continue to investigate, we would like to reassure users
that there is currently no evidence pointing towards a breach of
Nintendo’s databases, servers or services. As one action in our
ongoing investigation, we are discontinuing the ability to use a
Nintendo Network ID to sign in to a Nintendo Account. All other
options to sign-in to a Nintendo Account remain available.

In addition, we also continue to strongly encourage users to enable
two-step verification for their Nintendo Account as instructed here:
How to set-up two-step verification for a Nintendo Account.

If any users become aware of unauthorised activity, we encourage them
to take the steps outlined in the article about the Nintendo Account
recovery process.

During the investigation, in order to deter further attempts of
unauthorised sign-ins, we will not reveal more information about the
methods employed to gain unauthorised access.

We apologise for the inconvenience and concerns caused to our
customers, and we will continue working hard to safeguard the security
of our users’ data".