Hackers grow bolder and the victim list grows longer

If there's one thing the PSN hack showed, it's that even large gaming companies like Sony are susceptible to cyberattacks. Now, Nintendo, Epic Games, Square Enix, Bethesda and Codemasters can join the club of hacking victims.

Nintendo reported that one of its U.S. web servers was hacked earlier this month, prompting the Big N to send notices to its customers to change their passwords and usernames to prevent their personal information from being stolen. While Nintendo said that no financial or third party data was lost, it's clear that after this attack, Sony was just the beginning.

Lulz Security, responsible for the recent “minor” Senate.gov leak, resulting in the exposure of a large list of the site's root directory and file names, recently snuck into Bethesda Softwork's backdoor. LulzSec, boasted on their twitter account that they broke into Bethesda's website, grabbed more than 200,000 Brink user info and told the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim publisher to “fix your junk”. LulzSec hasn't released its stolen info and no financial data was lost. Still, Bethesda, like Nintendo, encouraged all it's customers to change their usernames and reset passwords.

Next up: Epic Games, yep the Gears of War developer's website and forums got hit, too. Although, the attack was not as serious as the PSN hack. The hackers, which weren't identified, responsible could only obtain email addresses, passwords, but no info linked to any financial data. Epic reported no further damage to itself or its customers.

The same can't be said about the DiRT3 creators, Codemasters, which got hit by twice in a month. On June 3, hackers pillaged the publisher's website and made off with lots of user data, including members names, screen names, user names, Xbox Live Gamertags and IP addressees to name a few. Fortunately, Codemaster uses an external payment provider, so no financial data was reported lost. Still, the company doesn't completely dismiss the fact that this information could still have been compromised.

Cybercriminals are getting so confident that they even targeted Square Enix, one of the most highly respected and award-winning company responsible for developing the Final Fantasy series and publishing the upcoming Tomb Raider. It's suspected that Anonymous is involved in nabbing 25,000 customer emails and 350 resumes of people who have applied for jobs at the company's Canadian office.

With all these attacks, it's questionable if any gaming developers will remain hack-free. It's really a question of “who's next?”