Nintendo says US server breached, no data lost

Nintendo was targeted in a recent online data attack, but no personal or company information was lost.

TOKYO — Nintendo was targeted in a recent online data attack, but no personal or company information was lost, the Japanese maker of the Wii game console said Sunday.

The server of an affiliate of Nintendo Co.’s U.S. unit was accessed unlawfully a few weeks ago, but there was no damage, company spokesman Ken Toyoda said.

“There were no third-party victims,” Toyoda said, declining to elaborate. “But it is a fact there was some kind of possible hacking attack.”

The damage from what could be part of a recent spate of such data breaches targeting big-name brands was more serious at rival Sony Corp.

Sony has said massive personal information, including email addresses, names and birth dates, and involving more than 100 million users, is suspected of having been stolen after security was compromised in April for its network service for the PlayStation 3 game machine, for other online services and, in the past week, from Sony Pictures’ website.

It is still unclear who is behind the attacks at Sony or Nintendo, based in Kyoto.

Hackers calling themselves Lulz Security — a reference to Internetspeak for “laugh out loud” — claim to have compromised more than 1 million Sony users’ personal information, posting many of the details to the Internet.

Lulz Security also claimed credit for the Nintendo attack, posting what they said was a Nintendo server configuration file to the Web. The group added that they pulled the hack off just for fun.

“We’re not targeting Nintendo,” the group said in a message posted to Twitter over the weekend. “We like the N64 (gaming console) too much — we sincerely hope Nintendo plugs the gap.”

Tokyo-based Sony has said it is strengthening security measures. It has contacted the FBI and other authorities for an investigation into the cyber attacks.