Hackers ruin a few hundred second-lives in Zynga's YoVille

YoVillers, beware. VentureBeat reports that less than 1,000 YoVille players on Facebook suffered an attack from hackers, which managed to disrupt their enjoyment of the game. Creator Zynga has already acknowledged and said to have addressed the issue, but such an attack is enough to raise eyebrows, especially considering how important security is to all Zynga games.

That said, Zynga CSO Nils Puhlmann reassures that players' personal or financial information is not at risk. "Credit card numbers are not an issue here," Puhlmann told VentureBeat. "It is more a case of YoVille players disrupting other YoVille players."

So, what exactly did the hackers manage to do, then? According to VentureBeat, the hackers (YoVille players) were able to break into the game accounts of other YoVillers and delete their inventories in a matter of minutes. And some YoVille players were reportedly enraged, though the YoVille forum thread containing said complaints has been closed. Luckily, according to Puhlmann, some players were banned during the investigation last month.

"Since we first identified abnormal activity a few weeks ago, securing YoVille and restoring the games of the affected players have been our top priorities. We quickly searched for and identified the vulnerabilities we believe attackers used to harass our players and patched them immediately," YoVille GM Steve Lurie said in a statement, VentureBeat reports. "Fortunately, no sensitive player information was at risk, and our assessments indicate that fewer than 1,000 YoVille players were impacted. We will remain vigilant in our ongoing security efforts."

Are you shocked that one of Zynga's games has been hacked? What do you do to protect yourself in Facebook games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.