WoW accounts getting hacked

[Owltoid]

I've been lucky enough to never have my accounts be hacked. i hope I'm not inviting some malicious users into my world by posting this, but I'm curious who is getting hacked. I know a few people that have had the unfortunate experience, but all those users have used a power leveling service or purchased the toon. Has anyone on this board ever been hacked and been on the straight and narrow the entire time? I know I'm getting the Blizzard authenticator soon. I don't have any assets to protect, but I don't want all my time to be wasted either.

[Naysayer]

Never have, but just like in Batman the bad guys are adapting and compensating for the new protection and user awareness out there. They're getting sneakier and you won't be able to identify them from Sex Legs anymore.


Yes, i totally cited Batman there. :thumbup:

[zanthor]

I've been playing MMO's since 1996... in that 12 years I've had exactly zero accounts compromised.

A good friend had his account violated twice in that same time. Both times the issue was that his son had shared the account info. (Of course he had shared the info with his son in the first place.)

A guildy of mine in WoW had his account hacked 5 times just before TBC launched. These were separated out a little bit, but in the end I'm confident that the hackers utilized a brute force attack for the last two. The first one he had shared his password with a malware that had a keylogger built in. The second and third happened and we are fairly certain it was because the malware had rootkitted the machine and kept reinfecting.

The fourth and fifth however we had reformatted his machine, from scratch. Updated anti-virus, malware, anti-spyware software and updated his password to a 10 digit mixed case alpha numeric with symbols password... yet his account got violated twice more (with a full reformat in between).

Blizzard refused to change his account name, which is all thats required for a brute force attack. So he bought a new account, setup a 10+ digit name that looks a lot like a password, setup a 10+ digit password with the same standards mentioned above, and has been secure ever since. I'm not sure if he ever picked up an authenticator.

Really though, for $6 you can't beat an authenticators protection.

[Multibocks]

I've had a virus that no matter how many times I formatted my drive it came right back. I ended up tossing the hard drive. Those sonsofbitches need a pineapple sodomy.

[puppychow]

Turn on an authencators ASAP -- it doesn't really matter anymore how good your account name/password is, there are programs that basically can spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week trying millions of passwords on millions of account names. And I'm sure there are farms and farms of PCs around the world doing just that, whether its against WoW accounts or bank accounts. Its actually pretty scary when you stop and think how much of your information is out there, and how shitty our security really is. Most people sadly use trivial names for their bank/broker/mail/etc accounts, and a hackers farm of computers can sit there forever trying to crack em.

The really scary thing is too that in a couple years PCs will be powerful enough to even brute force through stuff like the blizz authenticator, we really do need to move to some sort of universal, world-wide DNA fingerprint authenticator for all web sites. But then someone will come and chop off your fingers to hack in

[Multibocks]

You would think that WoW would block ip addresses that tried unsuccessfully to log in to your account that are obviously not even close to where you live... but then I guess they would just spoof their ip address.

[Hachoo]

Not to mention some people travel cross country to visit relatives and still want to play WoW while they're there.

I've been playing MMOs since the day ultima online came out and have never been hacked. HOWEVER, I still spent $6.50 for a WoW authenticator "just in case". I mean come on, most of us here pay $45-$75 a month to play WoW, a one time fee of $6.50 to guarantee you'll never be hacked is a no brainer, especially since you can use that 1 device for all 5 of your accounts at the same time.

[keyclone]

the type of account name and password you choose no longer matters.
ie:
username: joe$bob^biggs
password: l1v3@th3beach!

yes, that is secure against a dictionary attack and most brute force... but the pros have moved to keyloggers and are putting out software that gets into the box and watches for you to enter a password somewhere. then it'll send a message to some irc chat room where itself and thousands of other virus bots are logged in. end result, no amount of username/password gymnastics can save you from a keylogger... and it's only a matter of time before explorer gaffs at some animated gif or xml overrun and allows one onto your box. even anti-virus software doesn't protect you from NEW viruses/keyloggers.

the ABSOLUTE best solution would be a revolving RSA key... which is what the blizzard authenticator is based on. get it. get it today. have zero fears.

[GKar]

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The authenticator is wonderful for one account. Any tips how how best to manage five or more accounts with an authenticator? Seems like it would be a very painful process just to be able to log in, or if you game on the road taking 5 authenticators with you is very annoying and increases the potential for misplacing one.

[keyclone]

afaik, you can associate the same authenticator with multiple accounts... mine will be delivered shortly and i'll be able to give first hand knowledge. until then, maybe someone else will chime in