Online Store Shut Down

Silicon reports that a maker of popular role-playing games was forced to shut down its online store for four days after hackers pilfered email addresses, user names and encrypted passwords.

White Wolf Publishing, creator of video and table-top games such as World of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem, received a message from an "international group of hackers" on 11 December saying they had penetrated the company's online security defence, said a company spokeswoman.

The hackers threatened to post user data on the web unless the company paid them a sum of money. White Wolf has not publicly disclosed the amount of that sum.