The Nintendo Network has suffered a breach in Nintendo Network ID accounts, resulting in some people having their accounts compromised. The situation isn't as bad as you might think it is, and Nintendo was quick to hop on the problem.
Nintendo Everything reported that the Nintendo Network itself was not breached by hackers. Instead, another website was breached that was non-Nintendo related. The information from that site was used to cross-check the data with Nintendo Network ID's and they ended up managing to access up to 30 different ID accounts.
According to Squish Turtle, they managed to get a response from Nintendo about the matter, where the Big 'N' explained that their servers were not compromised and that the individuals who had their accounts infiltrated resulted in their accounts being suspended until the proper actions could be taken to reactivate their accounts. The statement from Nintendo reads:
"It has come to our attention that user login information was taken from a third-party website (not affiliated with Nintendo) that was recently compromised, and that some of the affected users also registered the same login information for their Nintendo Network ID,"To protect our users, we have suspended all compromised Nintendo Network IDs and linked Nintendo Accounts to prevent any potential unauthorised access. No Nintendo service or server was breached,"
Previously, some sources reported that hundreds of accounts were affected and that the Nintendo Network itself was compromised, but it turns out that that wasn't quite the whole truth. The reality was that gamers in the land down under had their accounts infiltrated through a completely different method.
Nintendo had to suspend the accounts in an attempt to prevent the hackers from gaining any further access to the users' profile information, and immediately reached out to the affected parties in order to get them to update their information by calling customer support.
On the bright side, it's great that these users weren't completely locked out of their accounts with no way back in. It would have been awful to lose a bunch of digital games attached to the account. It also shows that Nintendo was pretty quick in addressing the situation in an efficient way, which should make some people slightly more comfortable with what they have planned for the Nintendo Network as they upgrade it throughout the year leading to the paid service this fall.
Nintendo is making the alterations in light of the Nintendo Switch launching this March. The console's online network will first be free throughout spring and summer, but will become a premium paid service during the fall. This announcement was not well received by a lot of people, annoyed that the Nintendo Switch was bringing Nintendo into the era of paid multiplayer service.
Nintendo did have free multiplayer for the Wii and Wii U, originally using Friend Codes to connect to people online, but after the success of games like Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8, they began switching over to the Nintendo Network ID infrastructure, which is a lot closer to the likes of PSN or Xbox Live. Both PSN and Xbox Live have been under attack before by hackers, with PSN suffering a pretty massive attack years ago. So far Nintendo managed to thwart the attack... for now.
