League of Legends security breach exposes user data

A sufficiently high-level exploit has exposed "a portion" of North American League of Legends account data, Riot Games announced today. It is the same story we have heard from countless other online services in recent months. User data including account names, email addresses, encrypted passwords and encrypted credit card numbers (predating July 2011, when a new system was implemented) have been potentially exposed. Riot has urged its players to change passwords. Unfortunately, these sorts of exploits can never be entirely guarded against -- even for a company such as Riot. Other high-profile online game services have been targeted in the past. Perhaps the most notable case in recent memory was the 2011 attack on Sony's PlayStation Network, which affected some 77 million users.