Ragnarok Online Hacked, User Data Leaked

Thanks to GameSpot for their article indicating a major hacking incident on the PC MMORPG Ragnarok Online. According to the piece, developers Gravity initially "..reacted by rolling back the game's data a day, as a number of users had created items with game-master privileges", but then the problem worsened and revealed an apparent server-side hack, as opposed to the client-side hacking of Shadowbane, as "...a full list of user IDs and passwords was leaked to the general public... allowing anybody to gain access to any user account." There's also a very informative post on the GameFAQs messageboards detailing the spread of the 'user.txt' file around messageboards and P2P networks. The official Ragnarok site currently only has a form for players to reconfirm their identities via email, and has offered no official statement.

Comments

wtf? why?!

[Lord Bitman]

Uhm.. excuse me, but why would the passwords be storedin plain text? Is there something I'm missing here, or are MD5 and crypt's weaknesses so completely crippling that it's better to just store passwords as they are typed in?