Japanese video game maker Nintendo recently revealed that one of its main fan sites Club Nintendo got hacked and Out of 15.5 million login attempts in brute-force process, almost 24,000 user accounts have been hijacked early last month. 

Nintendo said it first became aware of the illicit logins on Tuesday evening after a large number of access errors on the site. However the security team believe that the hackers obtained the logins and passwords from an outside resource. 

The fan site, Club Nintendo, allows 3DS and Wii owners, as well as other fans of Nintendo games and hardware to answer survey questions and register their products. Members can do all this in exchange for “coins” or points. These can later be traded for other goods or services on the site. The site is open to users from all over the world, about four million of which are located in Japan.

These accounts contain secure data of users’ real names, addresses, phone numbers and email information. " There were scattered illicit attempts to login since June 9, but we became aware of the issue after the mass attempt on July 2 ," company said. 

Last week, Nintendo informed the public that it had suspended accounts that were accessed illegally and sent emails to the proper owners asking them to reset their passwords.

Nintendo clarified that the cyber attack were concentrated in Japan only which has about four million registered members in the fan site Club Nintendo.

Other game companies recently hit by security problems include Ubisoft , which last week warned that customer user names, e-mail addresses and cryptographically hashed passwords were illegally accessed from an account database that had been breached.

University of New Mexico student Jeffrey Knockel claims to have revealed an encrypted list of 1,100+ keywords within China's Skype client, TOM-Skype. This list, containing words like "BBC" and phrases like "Democratic Unionist Party", are suspected to be used for monitoring TOM-Skype users.

When a TOM-Skype user sends chat messages containing "suspicious" language found within the program's periodically updated keyword list, Knockel's research indicates an alert is sent to TOM-Skype's servers containing the sender's account name, message timestamp and detected word(s). 

The list was uncovered after Knockel had been monitoring suspicious communications between TOM-Skype and its Chinese servers. The collection of words was encrypted, but Knockel was able to employ some clever analytical techniques and reverse-engineering, which eventually lead to its uncovering.

The two-year long research project found only evidence of text-based chat monitoring. A similar mechanism used for voice communications was not found, although that doesn't preclude other vectors of surveillance.

According to Reporters Without Borders, numerous journalists and activists have had their Skype communications intercepted. As a result, privacy and anti-censorship advocates have chided Microsoft for not being more transparent about TOM-Skype and its dealings with China.

If you're going to do business in China, you have to play by their rules. In this case, Microsoft has ostensibly made concessions to appease Chinese authorities, granting the company access to the most populous market on Earth.

"As a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses." TOM-Skype said in 2008.

The practice though, although possibly a demand of Chinese policy, is likely to make Western idealists cringe. However, it should be noted that Western democracies aren't necessarily above these kinds of techniques themselves. 

Knockel has published the growing list of questionable keywords online. The words are in Chinese, but running them through a translator reveals a plethora of seemingly politically-focused language.

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