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Aion: New Security Update
Drew
Member Posts: 434
Worried about the security of your Aion account? The people at NCSoft have introduced a New Security Update, adding features to enhance the security of your Aion account.
Security Questions Added to All Accounts
We are increasing our security measures again by setting up additional security questions for all accounts. This enhanced system is part of our ongoing effort to ensure a safe and secure gaming environment for you.
Read more here.
Comments
This is something that has been put in Place by NCsoft corporate since it's also affecting City of Heroes
To little to late, My account was hacked. So I let the Sub run out, Months later Received an email to play for 5 days free
decided what the heck, logged in to old account to find all toons naked and broke ecept 1. had all epic gear and 30 mil in bank.
I sold all the gear and gave all the money away... some paybacks are great.
As of this update, I am locked out of my account, as a legitimate customer, go figure.
I'm not currently subscribed to any of their games, so I guess it's a matter of whether or not it's worth haggling with their support to get everything back (security questions about address and serial codes are great when you've long since moved, egads).
Completely illegible repcaptcha's don't help.
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
The funny thing about all of this, is that there wouldn't be a problem if people did the following:
1. Make secure passwords
2. Don't download anything you shouldn't be
3. Never give our your account information to anyone
Now i've heard all of the "no that's not true, the hackers got into my game" or "hacked my aion account". "My password is secure" "only i know my account information" "well i have nothing bad on my computer" No one hacked your account; they guessed your password, you responded to a fake email or installed a keylogger onto your computer because you clicked a link you shouldn't have. Plain and simple. There is no other method about this because if they had actually broken into all the game's database where all the accounting information is stored, all they would see is encrypted passwords. So they would still be screwed. "Well no you're wrong." Hrmm odd. All of my MMO accounts have never been broken into. Interesting.
So Dunworth, your account wasn't hacked. [mod edit] no name calling please - Soliloquy
You missed one of the most important ones.
4. Don't use the same username and password you use for your account anywhere else.
I've had several friends who've had their accounts compromised in WoW and Aion. All had clean machines both before and after the hijack, but the one thing they ALL had in common is that they used the same username and password at a bunch of different places.
9/10 times I would agree with you but NCSoft I'm just not so sure, Theres been more that 1 occasion over the last 10 years when NCSoft has had to request a subset of its customers change their password's because of data breaches or data thefts.
They're a bit late to the party aren't they?
My account got hacked after I already cancelled my subscription and uninstalled the game from my comp.
That together with an absolutely stellar amount of complaints about hacked accounts on the forums in the early days of the game, together with people getting bans for no clear reason really makes it so you can't blame it on the players themselves.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
The user end is only half of the battle. There are ways if they want to force their way into accounts if there is say a suitable delay in password entry and matching it to the DB. Flash/Javascript/and cross site scripting are quite exploitable if they are not kept up to date. Even 'safe' sites can host banner ads and other such nonsense which can possibly inject trojans onto ones computer.
Flash is particularly bad for the fact that the install doesnt remove the old verision off your computer thus leaving the possible exploit on your computer. Sites them selves are hackable and people can place minor bits to capture account names and passwords. Everyone immediately points fingers at the user end, and yes majority of the case thats true. You can still do everything right and still end up getting your stuff stolen.
And if you want to argue, just simply look at how many times human error has left a unencrypted laptop or thumb drive with massive amounts of personal identification on a plane/taxi/train. Or have had hackers insert bits of code to their benefit and it goes even years without being detected by the Site admins..on goverment run sites.
In addition to the normal virus and malware scanner. I highly recommend Secunia PSI. It is a free program that will help keep your various programs up to date so there are less vulnerabilites that can be exploited on your system. http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/
Same thing happened to this guy I played with. Hacked his Aion but more than that they got into his entire NCSOFT account and into other games he was subbed to or had been in the past. the hacker did so much damage in the account's name that the master account was banned. so even though he didn't want to sub to aion but rather lineage 2 he could not because it was all banned. he got so mad that he accused me of it all and we havn't spoken since! true story, bro.
dreamscaper: Yup, dead on there. Forgot about that one.
thamighty213: Yeah that can be an issue, however once again. NCSoft must know how to lock down passwords after all these years and so if the password is encrypted correctly and dashed with a bit of salt, it won't matter what they do with the database. They can't actually see the real passwords. Unless the person doesn't make a secure password. Then it's like handing them the keys because they got all the accounts listed.
This talk reminds me of when a guild I was in years and years ago, our site got broken into, defaced, etc, etc. The guild leader decided a secure password to the admin account was his ingame name spelled backwards. Sigh.
You know what is funny? Out of the 100's of online games I have played over the years, NCsoft games are the only games I have account problems with. Both Aion and my Guild Wars account have had security problems (and I use different emails/passwords for many games of course). Hell, I played Aion at release, never made it past the first month. Three months later I recieved an email saying my account was banned for RMT. Never had a single problem in any game....except NCsoft games. And their customer service is horrendus.