Square Enix is advising numerous Final Fantasy 14 players to change their account passwords due to an ongoing hack attempt.
As the developer explains in a new post on the Lodestone blog: "We are currently experiencing an attack by a third party that is attempting to gain access to the Square Enix Account Management System by using a combination of email addresses and passwords that appear to have been obtained from other online services of other companies."
Square Enix continues to write that it's mitigating the effects of the attack by "restricting access to accounts that we believe may have been compromised." The hack appears to be a work in progress from those attempting to gain access to players' Final Fantasy 14 accounts by combining the list of account IDs and passwords they've received.
As such, Square Enix strongly recommends players reset their passwords immediately and activate one-time passwords if they haven't done so already. If you're unfamiliar with the latter, it's a system of temporary authentication for accounts, which happens to be highly effective against hacking parties.
"Should we continue to experience rising numbers of unauthorized access attempts, a password reset for all Square Enix accounts may be initiated," the Lodestone blog post concludes.
We'll have to keep an eye on Square Enix and Final Fantasy 14's social channels for the next few days to see whether this next measure goes ahead. The mammoth 14-hour broadcast kicks off later today, including a Live Letter From the Producer segment focusing on patch 6.25, so we may get an update sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, the Final Fantasy 14 community has been left stunned after a 6,500-hour veteran just discovered an 11-year-old feature.
