BF2 security problems fixed

EA says it has fixed a security problem with the Battlefield 2 servers which unlocked all the weapons in the game for the owners of five million randomly selected accounts.

One forumite, going under the name of zero2zero and claiming to be one of the modders responsible, posted a message on the Battlefield 2 boards which reads: "Since EA didn't take the time to respond (or maybe even read) our emails about various stats-server security holes, it clearly showed us how much they care.

"Therefore, we came to the conclusion that modifying 5 million accounts wouldn't be that big of a deal. That being said, accounts with ids from 40,000,000 to 45,000,000 now have all of their weapons unlocked.

"What will be next week?" the poster pondered.

"Perhaps we'll give everyone their Distinguished Service Medal, or maybe we'll elevate everyone to the rank of Sergeant Major."

Not if EA has anything to do with it. The publisher has released an official update to combat the unlock that's said to have "fixed the root issue that caused this to occur" - there's no confirmation or denial that hackers were responsible, however.

But wouldn't you know it - EA then found itself dealing with another problem after BF2 players discovered they couldn't connect with EA and GameSpy's account servers.

So, the publisher posted a new message reading: "We want to let the community know that GameSpy, EA and DICE are aware of the current Battlefield 2 accounts outage and will deploy a fix for the issue in the next hour."

They've also confirmed that patch 1.03 is currently in development and will be released some time towards the end of August. The patch contains more than 140 fixes and improvements, including server and client performance enhancements, an improved server browser with Favourites and History lists, squad messaging, an upgraded HUD and general gameplay tweaks. You can read more on the EA Games website.