People try to plug all kinds of addons and things into WoW. It wouldn't surprise me if it came out someday that half these things generate the problems people have with their keys being stolen.
It is impossible to code anything into a wow addon that will steal account information. They just do not work that way.
It is possible that people can disguise a virus by saying it is an addon, but that would require the player to actively run some sort of installation program in order for the virus to load up.
if they got your account info it means you had something on your computer or blizzard has been compromised. Which the latter seems very unlikely, so you had something, virus scanners isn't going to catch everything.
blaming blizzard is not going to change that fact.
Like some others I had not played WoW in quite some time and suddenly, out of the blue, Blizzard started sending me emails about a possible violation or security issue with my account. I was able to log in and saw the game account was still inactive so I blew it off. The warnings then started coming at least once a month and I decided to contact Blizzard. I asked them to purge the account and they proceeded to inform me that they do not do that. I insisted that my personal and private information was on their servers that were clearly not safe and there is nothing in the EULA that indicated Blizzard has rights to hold that info indefinately on their servers... PURGED!
If you too have left WoW be advised you may not have completely left WoW. It's your info out there, get it back and get it purged.
I'm sorry, but it's WAY too common now for anyone that's been away from the game for any length of time to time to come back with a hacked account; happened to me too.
To TRY to even justify that as being the USER's fault is a bunch of bullshit and foolish, epsecially if you don't and haven't had the game installed on your system for possibly YEARS.
Quit tryin to defend a corporate giant for being cheap-ass bastards that can't take care of their own security. With as much money as they're raking in they should be GIVING Authenticators away to people if this problem is so rampent in their game. How often do you see it in other games? Rarely. Oh sure, I know you're going to say it's because they're not as popular and not worth it, but let's be real. It was a problem in the game from the begining.
They still haven't even taken agressive measures to stop the fucking Gold Spammers like so many other games.... why can they manage to do it? A spam button and ignore filter is LAZY.
My account was hacked twice. I give up on Blizzard and NCSoft, the only two companies where I ever have this problem. At least Blizzard was willing to try and fix it, but NCSoft would never even respond to my emails. Both are not worth the headache of having to deal with this crap.
I'm sorry, but it's WAY too common now for anyone that's been away from the game for any length of time to time to come back with a hacked account; happened to me too.
To TRY to even justify that as being the USER's fault is a bunch of bullshit and foolish, epsecially if you don't and haven't had the game installed on your system for possibly YEARS.
Quit tryin to defend a corporate giant for being cheap-ass bastards that can't take care of their own security. With as much money as they're raking in they should be GIVING Authenticators away to people if this problem is so rampent in their game. How often do you see it in other games? Rarely. Oh sure, I know you're going to say it's because they're not as popular and not worth it, but let's be real. It was a problem in the game from the begining.
They still haven't even taken agressive measures to stop the fucking Gold Spammers like so many other games.... why can they manage to do it? A spam button and ignore filter is LAZY.
You don't need the game installed or even have played it recently to be hacked. Getting wow hacked doesn't need to have anything to do with wow. You use the same login and password on other sites. Those sites get hacked. They try those logins on other sites as well as wow and they get in. And most people tend to use very few username and passwords and that's how that happens.
You can report gold sellers. They get banned. Problem is they just make another account. No way to stop that. They can connect via proxys to change their IP address as well.
Account hacking was never a problem in the beginning. It's something that has gotten worse as the game has become more popular.
Like some others I had not played WoW in quite some time and suddenly, out of the blue, Blizzard started sending me emails about a possible violation or security issue with my account.
That wasn't blizzard. It's phising emails not sent by them. Spammers send those out to everyone as most people tend to play wow.
What did yall think? 200 million accounts or something like that, and you didn't think that hackers from all over the world weren't spending long nights trying to figure out how to hack em? Thats alot of fish in the sea, a steady hand is bound to grab something..
I havent used my WoW account in ages, yet in my spam mail I get Battle.net emails about my account being suspended, password being changed like over and over again. I have been deleted my personal info and CC# , but I find it amusing how easy it must really be to hack battle.net.. All that money and they have no more security than your average F2P..
Hell, you'd figure they'd have their very own cyber police force surveying their virtual networks 24/7 or something..
I returned to WoW 3 weeks ago to see the changes in Azeroth. My account had been hacked also. Although I really wasn`t expecting to stay (actually, I`ve already cancelled my subscription), it still pissed me off that the hacking occured. I called Blizzard and they got my account back to me and the Blizzard guy was very helpful and friendly, but he didn`t seem alarmed that this had happened. He told me "it happens" and said that a GM could restore all my lost gear and gold. I never bothered though. I started a new toon to see the changes in the world, played to lvl 32, got bored, then unsubscribed.
You lost your account because of something YOU did. Blizzard isn't going to take your account and make you believe you got hacked. You say "they force me to buy their authenticator", that's wrong. For one, the physical authenticator costs next to nothing and secondly, it's FREE if you have a compatible phone for the app. Why would it be FREE if they wanted your money? Even if you didn't have a compatible phone, you can download an emulator on your computer.
They now also have an even more secure service that is, guess what, FREE. The new service has you call a phone number and make a pin. After that they watch your account to see if there is any suspicious logins. If a login is attempted that is out of the norm, the game tells you to call the number, with YOUR phone, and punch in the pin you created so you can login. The hacker would need both your phone, and know what your pin is to gain access to your account. Again, this service is FREE. FREE FREE FREE. But I guess blizzard is money hungry and forces you to buy more of their products.
Well for anyone that has any concerns about their password check out this site, it will test your password to see how long it would take for a brute force attack to brake your password.
um ... I'd argue that the act of willingly entering your password into 3rd party site automatically makes it insecure. If you aren't knowlgeable enough to do the brute force time calculation on your own, are you really going to be able to verify that the website isn't really sending the password off to be logged in someone's new dictionary?
Despite stories like the author of this article, I fear that in many ways MMOs are still living in an age of innocence.
2nd on a website there is a review of anti-virus for the 2011 one and its telling to choose the one based on how ricky you surfing the web and use your pc
3rd few trick can help: security update (symantec already told it ... on 32bit it take 5min to be infected if you surf without windows update ) ... 64 bit (it help cause there are not lot of malicious thing on it until they program more) ... warez and porn (when you dont know where to get it and how be secure on it ... cracking software and game can get you lot of trouble
there are trap everywhere publicity video or jpg can be countain a backdoor or keylogger or both ... even facebook with farmville you can be infected by receiving a trapped item
Well for anyone that has any concerns about their password check out this site, it will test your password to see how long it would take for a brute force attack to brake your password.
um ... I'd argue that the act of willingly entering your password into 3rd party site automatically makes it insecure. If you aren't knowlgeable enough to do the brute force time calculation on your own, are you really going to be able to verify that the website isn't really sending the password off to be logged in someone's new dictionary?
Despite stories like the author of this article, I fear that in many ways MMOs are still living in an age of innocence.
So if I use ddddddddddddddddddddd as a password, it will take a desktop about 8 octillion years to crack it?
I'm sorry but I don't sympathize, especially for an MMO website player. If there is an authenticator in an MMO....use it! simple as that....don't be lazy. There is a reason why it is there.
I stopped playing the week after Burning Crusade came out, never touched my account.
That was over 2 years ago or so, but early this summer they banned my WoW account, i got the mail thinking it was a scam, manually went to wow-europe and logged, sure enough it was banned.
Now how could they get the information i havent typed since 2007.
Im even so paranoid to run scans every week on my computer, and never use links (always type in manually) and disable cookies, use no-script and different passwords and couple different e-mails on the accounts of different games.
Only time i ever got hacked previously was when NcSoft got their database hacked because someone doesn't know how to type in a disconnect to the sql in the end of the php script.
Only people with that information was blizzard and how people got a hold of em scares me, i had even a complex password that would take bruteforce attack 20 years or so to figure out even if they were allowed to run a continous script with no ip-ban after "a number" tries that im sure blizzard has on its servers.
I was Hacked as well, im out of the closet im so proud i dont have to "dont ask dont tell anymore" I feel like a human being now
No really im not a digital idiot and and have a virus scanner as well; but I did have a few new characters on several servers, names like "leiskme" and "peahjst" all level 1 chars too
Typical Blizzard BS. That is why I no longer play World of Wastedcraft, I let my account go inactive unsubscribed and packed my stuff all away in a box just incase I ever wanted to play again. I played my last 30 days and then faded from Azeroth..well I decided I wanted to go back a year or so later...so I dug out my gear ready for some adventure. I went to log in...yes yes I know my account is inactive..so I jumped through those hoops...only to be told Your account has been compromised...Ok cool I can fix this I get myself a Battlenet account or whatever they call it that fixed it for ohh about a day. I get up bright tailed and bushy eyed to play the next morning...Ohh dang what is this....YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN COMPROMISED...WTF ? Alright not a problem to Hades with that account..I pull out my secret weapon. Thats right a brand spanking new boxed set with the whole Lich King BS add on Pack... I remove my old game install my new game close my old account start a new account and begin play ohh yea..I play up to lvl 15 that day and go to bed only to get up the next morning to....Thats right you guessed it YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN COMPROMISED...so I unsubscribed deleted and totally swore of WOW...Now with that being said I have ran and run ever virus protection known to Humankind, I know my computer isnt buggy because I do not have trouble with my E-bay or Pay-Pal which has several hundred dollars worth of stuff running through it a week. Why is it Blizztard can not keep their subscribers safe from the pilferings of gold farming terrorist? Well I am of the mind much like the author of the above article that Blizztard is some how in on it...because our 15 bucks a month and loyalty to buy isnt enough they have to make and extra six fity off of us too. They are like the" Loch Nes Monser on South Park all they want is they damn six fity...except the Loch Nes Monser only wanted trefity." Well I say to Blizzard and Wow as a whole go suck a Gnomes toe, I will not throw away anymore of my time and or money to a half baked racket. Would any of you put money in a bank that continuosly let it just slip away and wouldnt stop it or didnt know why it happened. Their is a problem with Blizztard and it is not the players.....
The home keybutton is your friend, learn to use it when you make PW's. It's undetectable by keyloggers.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
If someone had access to blizzards servers why in the word would they steal all these selective accounts? They wouldn't, that's why. They would just steal ALL of the accounts. That is assuming that's what they were after. I for one, if I was going to commit a crime of that magnitude, would not care about your WoW account, as it is THE LEAST VALUABLE THING ON THE SERVERS. I would personally head for everyones personal info and or CC info. Those are much more valuable than your crappy WoW account.
Use common sense. Blizzards servers are not comprimised. You did something dumb and don't want to admit it or can't believe it can happen because you are Mr. Amazing tech savey guy. You got keylogged....deal with it.
I havent logged on WoW for 4 years. I have never ever had it installed on any of my current PCs. Yet all of a sudden I have begun to get phishing mails about my wow account in the past few months.
How did they know my login name and my email when I have never ever entered it on my PCs? And how did they know I had a WoW account with that login when I have never ever used it on any of my computers?
No the security leak must be at Blizzard because I haven't had the info on my computers at all.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
Welcome to the club. I bet you were made to believe it was your fault too, you either bought gold, logged onto your account from another computer, went to a website trying to find cheats or some other thing.
Me, i have never bought gold, never found the need to. I have never logged onto my account from another computer, i dont go to websites either, so am still at a loss as to how i was hacked, yet blizzard are addamant it was MY fault and the same goes with each and every other person who has been hacked. I have been playing online MMO's since 2000, only suffered 1 hacking.
Though my password was not changed, all my characters were picked clean, untradeable/disenchable items were deleted, each character was dumped in icecrown amongst the elite mobs, naked and with no HS. My low levels were dumped in a similar fate. I did get back most items on 3 characters, 5 days later i got 19k gold back on my 4th character (but no items) was told that had not been touched, i knew it had. and my paladin/priest never got any items or gold back (lost about 6k gold and alot of items).
Still, what really did piss me off was the fact that they really were adamant that it was my own fault. I know it is not my fault, i blame blizzard myself.
Yes it is clearly the users fault no way that Blizztard could be at fault. But you are correct they are most likely after the CC info and what not or maybe just sodomizing your characters and taking their gold for their sweat shop gold farming rings. At any rate if it isnt Blizztard why is it that several of us only have trouble with WOW and not like I said earlier Pay Pal E-Bay etc etc etc. Then again I really do not give a rats ass in a set of thermal under wear because I do not currently or will I ever again play WOW. So it was easy for me to fix....
Comments
It is impossible to code anything into a wow addon that will steal account information. They just do not work that way.
It is possible that people can disguise a virus by saying it is an addon, but that would require the player to actively run some sort of installation program in order for the virus to load up.
if they got your account info it means you had something on your computer or blizzard has been compromised. Which the latter seems very unlikely, so you had something, virus scanners isn't going to catch everything.
blaming blizzard is not going to change that fact.
Just quit playing WoW and move on ya Drones!
Like some others I had not played WoW in quite some time and suddenly, out of the blue, Blizzard started sending me emails about a possible violation or security issue with my account. I was able to log in and saw the game account was still inactive so I blew it off. The warnings then started coming at least once a month and I decided to contact Blizzard. I asked them to purge the account and they proceeded to inform me that they do not do that. I insisted that my personal and private information was on their servers that were clearly not safe and there is nothing in the EULA that indicated Blizzard has rights to hold that info indefinately on their servers... PURGED!
If you too have left WoW be advised you may not have completely left WoW. It's your info out there, get it back and get it purged.
I'm sorry, but it's WAY too common now for anyone that's been away from the game for any length of time to time to come back with a hacked account; happened to me too.
To TRY to even justify that as being the USER's fault is a bunch of bullshit and foolish, epsecially if you don't and haven't had the game installed on your system for possibly YEARS.
Quit tryin to defend a corporate giant for being cheap-ass bastards that can't take care of their own security. With as much money as they're raking in they should be GIVING Authenticators away to people if this problem is so rampent in their game. How often do you see it in other games? Rarely. Oh sure, I know you're going to say it's because they're not as popular and not worth it, but let's be real. It was a problem in the game from the begining.
They still haven't even taken agressive measures to stop the fucking Gold Spammers like so many other games.... why can they manage to do it? A spam button and ignore filter is LAZY.
The only thing that would have made this article better is if he ended it with "Yippy-Kai-Ay, Mother Fucker!"
My account was hacked twice. I give up on Blizzard and NCSoft, the only two companies where I ever have this problem. At least Blizzard was willing to try and fix it, but NCSoft would never even respond to my emails. Both are not worth the headache of having to deal with this crap.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
You don't need the game installed or even have played it recently to be hacked. Getting wow hacked doesn't need to have anything to do with wow. You use the same login and password on other sites. Those sites get hacked. They try those logins on other sites as well as wow and they get in. And most people tend to use very few username and passwords and that's how that happens.
You can report gold sellers. They get banned. Problem is they just make another account. No way to stop that. They can connect via proxys to change their IP address as well.
Account hacking was never a problem in the beginning. It's something that has gotten worse as the game has become more popular.
Tribes 2 is back!!!! http://www.tribesnext.com/
And from the makers of tribes: Fallen Empire: Legions http://www.instantaction.com/
That wasn't blizzard. It's phising emails not sent by them. Spammers send those out to everyone as most people tend to play wow.
Tribes 2 is back!!!! http://www.tribesnext.com/
And from the makers of tribes: Fallen Empire: Legions http://www.instantaction.com/
What did yall think? 200 million accounts or something like that, and you didn't think that hackers from all over the world weren't spending long nights trying to figure out how to hack em? Thats alot of fish in the sea, a steady hand is bound to grab something..
I havent used my WoW account in ages, yet in my spam mail I get Battle.net emails about my account being suspended, password being changed like over and over again. I have been deleted my personal info and CC# , but I find it amusing how easy it must really be to hack battle.net.. All that money and they have no more security than your average F2P..
Hell, you'd figure they'd have their very own cyber police force surveying their virtual networks 24/7 or something..
I returned to WoW 3 weeks ago to see the changes in Azeroth. My account had been hacked also. Although I really wasn`t expecting to stay (actually, I`ve already cancelled my subscription), it still pissed me off that the hacking occured. I called Blizzard and they got my account back to me and the Blizzard guy was very helpful and friendly, but he didn`t seem alarmed that this had happened. He told me "it happens" and said that a GM could restore all my lost gear and gold. I never bothered though. I started a new toon to see the changes in the world, played to lvl 32, got bored, then unsubscribed.
You lost your account because of something YOU did. Blizzard isn't going to take your account and make you believe you got hacked. You say "they force me to buy their authenticator", that's wrong. For one, the physical authenticator costs next to nothing and secondly, it's FREE if you have a compatible phone for the app. Why would it be FREE if they wanted your money? Even if you didn't have a compatible phone, you can download an emulator on your computer.
They now also have an even more secure service that is, guess what, FREE. The new service has you call a phone number and make a pin. After that they watch your account to see if there is any suspicious logins. If a login is attempted that is out of the norm, the game tells you to call the number, with YOUR phone, and punch in the pin you created so you can login. The hacker would need both your phone, and know what your pin is to gain access to your account. Again, this service is FREE. FREE FREE FREE. But I guess blizzard is money hungry and forces you to buy more of their products.
um ... I'd argue that the act of willingly entering your password into 3rd party site automatically makes it insecure. If you aren't knowlgeable enough to do the brute force time calculation on your own, are you really going to be able to verify that the website isn't really sending the password off to be logged in someone's new dictionary?
Despite stories like the author of this article, I fear that in many ways MMOs are still living in an age of innocence.
on this link its telling that we dont own the game even if you paid to buy it
http://translate.google.ca/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.numerama.com%2Fmagazine%2F17604-world-of-warcraft-les-joueurs-ne-sont-pas-proprietaires-de-leur-jeu.html&sl=fr&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
2nd on a website there is a review of anti-virus for the 2011 one and its telling to choose the one based on how ricky you surfing the web and use your pc
3rd few trick can help: security update (symantec already told it ... on 32bit it take 5min to be infected if you surf without windows update ) ... 64 bit (it help cause there are not lot of malicious thing on it until they program more) ... warez and porn (when you dont know where to get it and how be secure on it ... cracking software and game can get you lot of trouble
there are trap everywhere publicity video or jpg can be countain a backdoor or keylogger or both ... even facebook with farmville you can be infected by receiving a trapped item
to clonclude
all depend of the risk you want to handle
So if I use ddddddddddddddddddddd as a password, it will take a desktop about 8 octillion years to crack it?
hah
I'm sorry but I don't sympathize, especially for an MMO website player. If there is an authenticator in an MMO....use it! simple as that....don't be lazy. There is a reason why it is there.
Gotta second this post.
I stopped playing the week after Burning Crusade came out, never touched my account.
That was over 2 years ago or so, but early this summer they banned my WoW account, i got the mail thinking it was a scam, manually went to wow-europe and logged, sure enough it was banned.
Now how could they get the information i havent typed since 2007.
Im even so paranoid to run scans every week on my computer, and never use links (always type in manually) and disable cookies, use no-script and different passwords and couple different e-mails on the accounts of different games.
Only time i ever got hacked previously was when NcSoft got their database hacked because someone doesn't know how to type in a disconnect to the sql in the end of the php script.
Only people with that information was blizzard and how people got a hold of em scares me, i had even a complex password that would take bruteforce attack 20 years or so to figure out even if they were allowed to run a continous script with no ip-ban after "a number" tries that im sure blizzard has on its servers.
I was Hacked as well, im out of the closet im so proud i dont have to "dont ask dont tell anymore" I feel like a human being now
No really im not a digital idiot and and have a virus scanner as well; but I did have a few new characters on several servers, names like "leiskme" and "peahjst" all level 1 chars too
Typical Blizzard BS. That is why I no longer play World of Wastedcraft, I let my account go inactive unsubscribed and packed my stuff all away in a box just incase I ever wanted to play again. I played my last 30 days and then faded from Azeroth..well I decided I wanted to go back a year or so later...so I dug out my gear ready for some adventure. I went to log in...yes yes I know my account is inactive..so I jumped through those hoops...only to be told Your account has been compromised...Ok cool I can fix this I get myself a Battlenet account or whatever they call it that fixed it for ohh about a day. I get up bright tailed and bushy eyed to play the next morning...Ohh dang what is this....YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN COMPROMISED...WTF ? Alright not a problem to Hades with that account..I pull out my secret weapon. Thats right a brand spanking new boxed set with the whole Lich King BS add on Pack... I remove my old game install my new game close my old account start a new account and begin play ohh yea..I play up to lvl 15 that day and go to bed only to get up the next morning to....Thats right you guessed it YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN COMPROMISED...so I unsubscribed deleted and totally swore of WOW...Now with that being said I have ran and run ever virus protection known to Humankind, I know my computer isnt buggy because I do not have trouble with my E-bay or Pay-Pal which has several hundred dollars worth of stuff running through it a week. Why is it Blizztard can not keep their subscribers safe from the pilferings of gold farming terrorist? Well I am of the mind much like the author of the above article that Blizztard is some how in on it...because our 15 bucks a month and loyalty to buy isnt enough they have to make and extra six fity off of us too. They are like the" Loch Nes Monser on South Park all they want is they damn six fity...except the Loch Nes Monser only wanted trefity." Well I say to Blizzard and Wow as a whole go suck a Gnomes toe, I will not throw away anymore of my time and or money to a half baked racket. Would any of you put money in a bank that continuosly let it just slip away and wouldnt stop it or didnt know why it happened. Their is a problem with Blizztard and it is not the players.....
The home keybutton is your friend, learn to use it when you make PW's. It's undetectable by keyloggers.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Use common sense.
If someone had access to blizzards servers why in the word would they steal all these selective accounts? They wouldn't, that's why. They would just steal ALL of the accounts. That is assuming that's what they were after. I for one, if I was going to commit a crime of that magnitude, would not care about your WoW account, as it is THE LEAST VALUABLE THING ON THE SERVERS. I would personally head for everyones personal info and or CC info. Those are much more valuable than your crappy WoW account.
Use common sense. Blizzards servers are not comprimised. You did something dumb and don't want to admit it or can't believe it can happen because you are Mr. Amazing tech savey guy. You got keylogged....deal with it.
I havent logged on WoW for 4 years. I have never ever had it installed on any of my current PCs. Yet all of a sudden I have begun to get phishing mails about my wow account in the past few months.
How did they know my login name and my email when I have never ever entered it on my PCs? And how did they know I had a WoW account with that login when I have never ever used it on any of my computers?
No the security leak must be at Blizzard because I haven't had the info on my computers at all.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
I wouldnt be surprised if people that have never even heard of the game get the phishing emails.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
Join me on Twitch Facebook Twitter
Welcome to the club. I bet you were made to believe it was your fault too, you either bought gold, logged onto your account from another computer, went to a website trying to find cheats or some other thing.
Me, i have never bought gold, never found the need to. I have never logged onto my account from another computer, i dont go to websites either, so am still at a loss as to how i was hacked, yet blizzard are addamant it was MY fault and the same goes with each and every other person who has been hacked. I have been playing online MMO's since 2000, only suffered 1 hacking.
Though my password was not changed, all my characters were picked clean, untradeable/disenchable items were deleted, each character was dumped in icecrown amongst the elite mobs, naked and with no HS. My low levels were dumped in a similar fate. I did get back most items on 3 characters, 5 days later i got 19k gold back on my 4th character (but no items) was told that had not been touched, i knew it had. and my paladin/priest never got any items or gold back (lost about 6k gold and alot of items).
Still, what really did piss me off was the fact that they really were adamant that it was my own fault. I know it is not my fault, i blame blizzard myself.
Yes it is clearly the users fault no way that Blizztard could be at fault. But you are correct they are most likely after the CC info and what not or maybe just sodomizing your characters and taking their gold for their sweat shop gold farming rings. At any rate if it isnt Blizztard why is it that several of us only have trouble with WOW and not like I said earlier Pay Pal E-Bay etc etc etc. Then again I really do not give a rats ass in a set of thermal under wear because I do not currently or will I ever again play WOW. So it was easy for me to fix....