DayZ Dev Explains Forum Hack, Promises Better Security Going Forward

DayZ developer Bohemia Interactive has shared some new insight into the recent security breach in which hackers obtained the all forum members' usernames, emails, and passwords.

The forum hack took place on the morning of Saturday, January 23, Bohemia said in a statement to forum members that was passed along to GameSpot. Within an hour, the developer initiated a "maintenance takedown" of the DayZ forums in an attempt to confirm the hack and investigate it.

Bohemia said it was able to identify the party or parties responsible, but explained that it "will not elaborate on said source."

After confirming there was in fact a security breach, Bohemia said it sent out a tweet to inform members they might want to change their passwords; a more in-depth message was sent by email as well. This email didn't go through to everyone right away due to a technical issue, but it eventually did.

"While we will not specify the number of users affected, we will say that the information hacked was usernames, passwords, and emails," Bohemia added. "Fortunately, this information had a layer of protection via a hashed, salted algorithm, so accessing the data stolen was not as simple as reading it on the page."

Bohemia also notes that the DayZ forum breach "in no way" affects player accounts.

Finally, Bohemia reiterated that it plans to update the DayZ forums to run on the Bohemia Account system instead of IPBoards, which Bohemia says offers less security. The forums remain offline as of February 8.

"We'll additionally be implementing other protective measures in hopes of avoiding similar incidents in the future," the developer said. "We very much sympathize with our community and continue to express our apologies for the frustration caused by this breach. Our team is working diligently to provide them a more secure forum experience."

DayZ launched for PC through Steam Early Access in 2013 and has sold more than 3 million copies. Console versions of the game are in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but release dates have not been announced.