Zynga Hack in September Exposed 173 Million User Accounts: Report

Earlier in September this year, a prolific hacker claimed to have stolen personal details of 218 million users of a popular online game Words With Friends. The hacker claimed that those who downloaded Zynga’s Words with Friends before September 2 were affected by the breach. These include users on both Android and iOS. A fresh report seems to confirm that at least 173 million people were affected by the hack, making it the 10th largest hack of personal information on the Internet. Zynga is known for some popular online games including FarmVille and OMGPOP.

According to a report by Have I Been Pwned, the Zynga hack in September 2019 exposed 173 million unique email addresses. The stolen data includes usernames and passwords stored as salted SHA-1 hashes. It also includes email addresses of users.

In September, Zynga admitted that there has been a security breach and ‘log-in information’ of some players who used Draw Something and Words With Friends apps had been accessed. The company didn’t declare the exact number of users who were affected as a part of the breach. Zynga said it had reached out to affected users directly via email.

At the time, Zynga claimed that the hack did not involve any financial information.

The hacker, known as ‘gnosticplayers’, has been previously linked to other major data breaches popularly known as ‘the collections’ which involved personal data of billions of users across popular online services. Zynga had around 67 million monthly active users in November.

Users who play Words With Friends or Draw Something should switch their passwords if they haven’t already done it.