The official Atlus USA web site was reportedly compromised by a "third-party entity" today, inserting malicious software into the company's site. According to Atlus, this may have led to visitors being infected by malware.
Atlus.com is currently down, as the company says it is working to "repair and restore" the web site, asking visitors to "protect their computers with anti-virus software and to run malware removal software on their systems to ensure that their security is not compromised."
The publisher has issued an apology via e-mail to subscribers of its newsletter, saying it is "deeply troubled" by the attack. The full communication is after this.
Dearest fans of Atlus,
Today (4/24/2009), our web domain (atlus.com) was hacked and compromised. A third-party entity embedded malicious code into the script, and regretfully, for a period of a few hours (from roughly 9:00am PST until 2:30pm PST), this malicious software (which we believe we have identified as a Trojan) may have made its way onto your systems.
The faith and trust of our fans is of the utmost importance to us, a responsibility we don't take lightly. As such, we are deeply troubled by this development, and we are now working to repair and restore the website.
We advise any and all of our fans, whether they visited our website or not in the past day or two, to protect their computers with anti-virus software and to run malware removal software on their systems to ensure that their security is not compromised.
As we work quickly to restore the Atlus website and to investigate the nature of this security breach, we ask for your understanding and patience.
Sincerely,
Atlus