EVE Online, the massively multi-player online Sci-Fi game, shut down for ten hours yesterday (Friday), after discovering a security breach.

In a statement posted on the site, Jón Hörðdal, chief operating officer of CCP, EVE Online's owner, said the company had "discovered an anomaly in the EVE Online Database indicating a potential exploit" at 10.25AM GMT. A couple of hours research later, the company decided that the best thing to do was to go "completely dark while an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure was executed".

The result? "An indication that one of our databases was being accessed through a security breach." The company detected three database actions arising from the breach, none of which "affected other users than the one doing the actions. We can also confirm that no personal details such as users’ credentials or credit card numbers were exposed through this incident:"

Some Reg readers have complained to us about being left in the dark about EVE Online going dark. We have also listened to mutterings about refunds being in order - the service costs UK members £39 for a 90-day subscription.

But it is easy to sympathise with CCP's action. "While some may feel that such a drastic reaction was not warranted," Hörðdal said, "it is always our approach to err on the side of caution in order to protect the players. We of course understand the effect and disruption this has had for our players and apologize for not having been able to explain to the community what was going on. In these cases it can often be counterproductive to containment to give out information while we are in the process of evaluating the scope of the problem."

EVE Online lit up the internet again at 22:00 GMT yesterday. ®

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