Website Vulnerability Causes Data Leak of Contact List Including Journalists, YouTubers and Analysts
The Entertainment Software Association has stated the site where the data leak could be accessed has been taken down but the information of over 2,000 E3 attendees who received or applied for their credentials publicly available. The leaked list is a spreadsheet that was initially intended for video game companies to easily reach news media and other content creators but it was easily accessible on the E3 website through a download link. The list included names, publications, email addresses, phone numbers and even the addresses of attendees in one of the worst gaming industry leaks in recent memory.
The ESA said once they were notified of the data breach, they immediately took steps to protect the data that was leaked and shut down the site which thankfully no longer available. The information was available through the E3 Exhibitor portal which is now entirely closed while the ESA figures out how to proceed. Considering how polarized people can be get, we’re hoping nobody is at personal risk after this data leak which affects the gaming community, the YouTube community, the analyst community, the streaming community and any other group of people who would attend E3.
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Needing a contact list of information like this is necessary for setting up interviews and sending showcase information but making it public is an extremely unfortunate miscalculation. Prior to this leak, the ESA touted a 20 year record without a security issue like this and have apparently have ensured mistakes like this won’t happen again moving forward.
We’ve attended E3 before and this leak gives us chills, here’s some footage we got from E3 2019.
Are you one of the E3 attendees affected by this leak? If you sent any credentials in, you might want to consider following up with the ESA. Have any of these recent big leaks affected you at all? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Engadget