Today Linden Labs notified users that on or about September 6th, a Second Life database server was compromised and that hackers may have gained access to users’ personal information including names, addresses, encrypted passwords and encrypted payment information. While, according to their press release there was no indication that the hackers could compromise users’ online accounts, Linden is forcing all of their users to change their Second Life passwords in response to the breach.

From the release:

“We’re taking a very conservative approach and assuming passwords were compromised and therefore we’re requiring users to change their Second Life passwords immediately,” said Cory Ondrejka, CTO of Linden Lab. “While we realize this is an inconvenience for residents, we believe it’s the safest course of action. We place the highest priority on protecting customer data and will continue to take aggressive measures to protect the privacy and security of the community.”

With more and more online games every year (most of them requiring payment of some type), the issue of data security could quickly become a major focus for game makers. Will we be seeing a Microsoft-circa-2000-esque push toward writing secure game code in the near future? It couldn’t hurt to start soon…