Online chess players’ data leaked in third-party breach

The most popular platform for chess players, Chess.com, has informed thousands of users that their personal details were exposed after hackers breached the company’s data storage vendor.

Chess.com user data may have ended up in the wrong hands, the company’s data breach notification to affected users has revealed. According to the notification, in late June this year, it learned of “unauthorized access to data stored in a third-party file transfer application used by Chess.com.”

Interestingly, a subsequent investigation revealed that unauthorized access took place twice, on June 5th and June 18th of this year. The company stressed that only files stored on the third-party file transfer application were accessed, and the cybersecurity incident did not impact Chess.com’s systems.

Information that the company submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office revealed that over 4,500 individuals were impacted by the attack. The platform, the largest of its kind, stressed that only .003% of its users were impacted by the attack.

The breach notice, sent to potentially impacted users, says that “Chess.com’s code and its member accounts were not compromised,” and that the company did not identify any “fraudulent use or public disclosure” of the exposed information.

“Upon learning of the incident, we took prompt steps to investigate the nature and scope of the incident and notified law enforcement. We also took measures to further secure our systems. The incident has been contained,” the company said.

However, to assist its users in mitigating potential risks, the company said it will provide users with credit monitoring services via a third party. The company also advised users to stay vigilant and review and monitor accounts for suspicious activity.

In 2023, Chess.com was also targeted by malicious actors. At the time, attackers shared data from more than 800K Chess.com users on a popular data leak forum. The leak allegedly included emails, user IDs, names, locations, points, ratings, membership levels, registration dates, and some other details used for playing and interacting on the platform.

Chess.com is a popular social networking site and online chess server with a user base that surpassed 200 million mark.