Change Your Passwords: DayZ Forums Hacked

Cast your mind back to the hazy summer of 2012, when the world first went wild for DayZ [official site]. ITV sent Ross Kemp in to interview DayZ's most notorious player-killing gangs, an entire edition of The Observer's New Review supplement reported on arts and culture in Chernarus (with a fascinating piece on puppet theatre!), and MasterChef's Invention Test round gave contestants scavenged ingredients - trail mix, tinned sardines, a can of Mountain Green, etc. My, how the survive 'em up took off!

So you may have a DayZ forums account, in which case you should know that they were hacked recently and you should do that whole password-changing dance.

"According to our investigation all usernames, emails and passwords from forums.dayzgame.com were accessed and downloaded by hackers," the DayZ gang say in a statement. They first detected the intrusion on January 23rd, but have now completed their investigation and are apologising and frowning.

"While the passwords were not stored in plain text, but in a more secure form, it is highly recommended that if you have used the same password elsewhere you change it immediately on all applicable websites and services."

Do so. And for goodness' sake, if you aren't already using different passwords for every site and service, please do that too. I myself use KeePass to generate and store unique passwords, but I'm sure folks can recommend plenty of other solutions.

Someone close to Ross Kemp, who wishes to remain anonymous, told RPS that the Ross Kemp on Gangs host "intends to fight the Internet, one on one, in the car park of the Watford Toby Carvery." They added that the former Eastenders hard man "is downloading hundreds of JPGs of pennies onto a USB thumb drive to swing in a sock."

DayZ's standalone spin-off is still in Early Access.