Amazon's Twitch Hacked, User Details May Have Been Stolen

Amazon's video game live-streaming and on-demand viewing platform Twitch has confirmed "unauthorized access" to accounts may have led to user's personal details being stolen according to a report from Express.

A March 23 notice at the Twitch official blog states: "We are writing to let you know that there may have been unauthorized access to some Twitch user account information. For your protection, we have expired passwords and stream keys and have disconnected accounts from Twitter and YouTube. As a result, you will be prompted to create a new password the next time you attempt to log into your Twitch account. We also recommend that you change your password at any website where you use the same or a similar password. We will communicate directly with affected users with additional details."

An email sent to an affected user reads: "We are writing to let you know that there may have been unauthorized access to some of your Twitch user account information, including possibly your Twitch username and associated email address, your password (which was cryptographically protected), the last IP address you logged in from, and any of the following if you provided it to us: first and last name, phone number, address, and date of birth. For your protection, we have expired your password and stream keys. In addition, if you had connected your account to Twitter or YouTube, we have terminated this connection. You will be prompted to create a new password the next time you attempt to log into your Twitch account. If applicable, you will also need to re-connect your account to Twitter and YouTube, and re-authenticate through Facebook, once you change your password."

In related news, security firm Symantec in a report released Friday said that there are now a number of botnet-for-hire services available in the underground markets that offer to use hacked computers to fraudulently inflate viewership for interested Twitch game broadcasters.

As observed by Symantec, the popularity of Twitch have allowed some broadcasters to earn money while streaming their videos. While many of these broadcasters have managed to legitimately win over their viewers, others have resorted to artificially inflating their viewership figures by renting a botnet service. Some of these botnets were created by infecting victims' computers with malware and forcing them to keep Twitch streams open in the background. While some botnet service providers may include computers where the user has agreed to take part in the scam, others include compromised computers that have been forced to become Twitch stream-viewing bots. Symantec observed one Twitch botnet threat, detected as Trojan.Inflabot, which appears to disguise itself as a fake Chrome or Adobe software update and has mainly infected computers in Russia, the US, UK, and Ukraine.