Gamer Escape 3.0 and Security Update
Yesterday, Gamer Escape was the victim of a ransomware attack.
At around 4:45 PM ET on April 14th, our server was accessed by a third party and all of our data was subsequently encrypted. A message was left by the intruder which instructed us to contact them.
These attackers then requested a large sum of money in return for unlocking the files. However, even if we decided to pay them, there was no guarantee that our files would be given back to us, or that the server would be free of other malicious code added by these intruders.
While we have no reason to believe that this attack on our server had a goal of obtaining user names and passwords, there is a possibility that that information was obtained during this intrusion. If you use your Gamer Escape account name or password on other websites, we would encourage you to change that password.
Additionally, our regular back-ups, which were hosted on the same server, were also compromised during this attack.
However, in this particular case we are, somewhat, lucky.
As many of you know, for some time now we have been working on what we have been calling Gamer Escape 3.0. A new website design accompanied by various site upgrades. Because of our work on GE 3.0, we had some parts of the website backed up for testing.
Sadly however, this back up was created in December of 2016. This means that we will be doing our best to get our Final Fantasy XIV wiki and our important blog posts re-added over the next couple of weeks. We will also be working to get the Final Fantasy XI wiki back up as well. Sadly, our Final Fantasy XV Wiki was lost as a result of these attacks.
Because of this incident, we’ve been forced to release Gamer Escape 3.0 before we intended and as a result, there may still be some issues with the site design. Please know that in most cases, we are aware of any issues and we are working hard to get things smoothed out as quickly as possible. Please feel to contact us via e-mail or on our Discord support channel if you have any problems with the new site.
We have already begun to add extra security to this new server, starting with SSL, and will continue to look into extra security measures as we move forward.