Angry Gamer Holds 'Runes of Magic' Hostage

Posted 01/18/2011 at 8:55am | by Paul Lilly

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There's no such reality show called "When Gamers Attack," but if there was to be one, Frogster's Runes of Magic game would take center stage.

Here's the deal. A user who goes by the nick "augustus87" is pretty pissed off with how the German outfit is running its game. Taking matters into his own hands, augustus87 hacked the game's database, posted the details of more than 2,000 accounts on the forum, and threatened to reveal names and passwords of 1,000 Runes of Magic players every day until his demands are met, GameSpy reports. Those demands?

No more closing or deleting threads, better treatment of Frogster employees worldwide, more transparency with customers, secure game clients against cheating and modding, protect personal info, and "stop spying on your employees."

"At Frogster we are constantly analyzing all IT and security-related systems with the goal of improving them continuously," Frogster's Axel Schmidt told Edge Magazine. "We have increased these efforts even more over the last week. Immediately after we noticed the attack, all systems were double-checked and secured by new firewalls, configured with new user permits and passwords and several other protection measures right away."

According to Frogster, the disgruntled hacker got his hands on "outdated log-in data from 2007," so there isn't a whole to worry abuot. Nevertheless, Frogster deemed the attack a "serious criminal offense" and is working with German law enforcement.

Image Credit: Frogster