till they actually try and crack some of these hackers that seems only use there keyloggers and trojans for wow purposes. I won't be playing the game again. I got hacked twice in a week, after i did a system format, put on my anti virus straight away did updates and used the touch screen for passwords and that i still got hacked. It's got out of hand and 17/87 active ppl that was in the guild i was in got hacked within a afew months, just goes to show that blizzard isn't taking it seriously and only doing whats needed to keep the peace and not tackling the actual problem.
I'm the first to admit I'm a cynic, I've been around a long time, I've seen a lot of things. I wrote papers on virii 15-20 years ago, so I'm no stranger to their methods and techniques.
This is the first time I have suffered at the hands of a hacker.
I seriously have doubts that I'm 100% to blame, if thats the case then by all means I'll take it on the chin, but for me, it's all a bit to straight forward, as a precaution i've had to change a few accounts and passwords and pretty much rendered that email address useless now.
Perhaps an insider looking at old accounts, perhaps a disgruntled employee, after working in IT for 20+ years I've seen a lot ,but I doubt I've seen it all. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Luckily for most people out there, most "hackers" are nothing more than wannabe's that simply use somebody elses toolkit to do their bidding, they seem to think this gives them some credibility as a hacker/leet geezer.
We bought them when they first came out, because a friend of ours had just been hacked at the time. After some time, we took a full year's hiatus from WoW.
When we came back last month, everything in our accounts was safe and sound, thanks (we think) to those little authenticators. Accounts that had lain dormant for that long surely would have been hacked, otherwise.
Getting hacked at this point doesn't even affect you anymore other than inhibiting you from playing for like a day on the character whos gear got sold or deleted. It takes like 10 minutes on the phone with a blizzard support person to get your account back, and transferred to a different email assuming you know your secret question and secret answer or have the key from the original wow still handy. GM's have gotten faster with getting your gear back too, taking less than a day usually now.
ya, its called practice heh, theyre up to like a million accounts hacked so far, theyll get around to everyone sooner or later!
I wander how many ppl get one of those phishing emails saying their WoW account was hacked and come running and screaming here to post without actually checking to see if they actually were hacked. Or of course the geniuses that click on those phishing links then get mad at Blizzard.
I got hacked twice within 4 days about 2 years ago about 6 or 7 months after WOTLK launched before the wow account --> battle.net merge, I have no idea how since I never went to any risque wow sites, only curse dot com for my addons. I'm guessing one of my addons I got from curse was infected with a keylogger and those little buggers are never detected by antivirus software, or at least 95% of the time they aren't. So I got my character restored the first time and everything was gravy.. then like 3 days later it happened again. Boy I sure was pissed. I contacted the blizzard customer service again and they went through the trouble of restoring my character again minus my 13k gold that got stolen.. they couldn't give that back. I asked them to keep my account locked pending email verification that I was ready to use it again so I could do a system wipe. I formatted twice using DOD methods including my master boot record just to play it safe and then reinstalled windows and the game clean, and emailed them to unlock the account with a new password. That apparently did the trick and since then I haven't had any trouble at all out of the hacker fags that took all my shit
I took a 6 month break, and when I came back I was hacked. After the same exact experience as the article writer, had my account was up and running. I was mad until I realized I had gotten the account back right before the farmer had hit up the AH. I then sold all the stuff he had farmed and made 20k gold...good day Some farmer is out there crying into his keyboard.
Playing: Lotro Have Played: EQII,DAOC,SWG,COH,EQ,DDO, Lotro,AoC, EvE,Guild Wars, Silkroad Online,Aion,and WoW Favorite of all time: WoW Waiting on:Swtor,Gw2, and Tera
Hell, I get those phsing emails everyday about my account needing verification and that they notice illegal action with my account. Funny thing, my account has been locked for a couple years now.... Sick of all the spam emails though.
You columnists continue to embarass yourself with your lack of knowledge of what a hack is. Keylogging is not a hack. It may have taken years, but you finally got dumb, downloaded something through a javascript, and had your account logged into.
Please, stop embarassing yourself and this site. Your lack of knowledge in just about everything you write about these days is really discrediting what used to be a site for gamers.
But, then again, the gaming community has gone the way of idiocy. So, maybe you are just keeping up with the times...
EDIT: To all those about to say, well it's not impossible. Yes, it is about as close to impossible as it gets. If someone actually hacked blizzards servers, they wouldn't even bother with your WoW account, they would just go straight for your personal and billing information, which is far more valuable.
Because hackers don't want your credit card, they want your WoW account....bwahahahahahahah
Hmm, maybe that is what happened, but I hadn't even installed WoW on this computer and haven't played the game in over two years. I recently tried to log back on and found that my password had been changed. After working with cust. service, it was determined that my account had been stolen. I got my account back, changed my PW and ordered an authiticator. When I logged back on I had a toon named SDFWER or something with almost 3k gold on another server. I simply reported it and they deleted it for me. I hadn't went to any sites and d/l'd a key logger. Hell, this is the only gaming site I visit. So, I can't believe that I had a key logger. I am sure that the majority of the "hacks" are because of those, but unless there are just random unrelated websites like msn.com and stuff for my work and school...well...no. And to say someone is dumb just because they got a keylogger...well, many sites that may not seem infected are. And usually one finds out after the fact.
Originally posted by gauge2k3
You columnists continue to embarass yourself with your lack of knowledge of what a hack is. Keylogging is not a hack. It may have taken years, but you finally got dumb, downloaded something through a javascript, and had your account logged into.
Please, stop embarassing yourself and this site. Your lack of knowledge in just about everything you write about these days is really discrediting what used to be a site for gamers.
But, then again, the gaming community has gone the way of idiocy. So, maybe you are just keeping up with the times...
got hacked 2x after I installed the Authenticator.
both times I had quit and cancelled the game, and only found out because some RL friends saw me logged in and tried to talk to me.
1 month after I cancelled my accounts got hacked, with authenticator installed, fishy. I quit again in Sept of this yr and they can hack it all they want I am done
I got the authenticator for my Android phone. Only the authenticator can prevent hacks.
they do but they also encourage them too. Almost a year ago, I was hacked as well. And the person(s) responsible used an authenticator to block any attempt I could make to log on to boot said person out of my account (like in the old days). So the only option I had was to call billing - and yea I had a while to wait too (the same day I was hacked quite a few others were attacked in a similar fashion). But the person that helped me once I was connected was v nice and v efficient with their assistance. I was lucky that none of my characters were deleted/server changed/stripped - the most that happened was that my lock was logged out in her pvp gear and had been used to farm mobs in Storm Peaks (they drop greys that can be sold for quite a bit of gold - or at least it was so at the time).
I read not too long ago about the changes Bliz made about account verification (with the phone call stuff - dont remember the actual thread) and was v pleased - I think hackers might think twice from now on
Sorry to hear about your hack and glad you got your acct back safe and sound.
My account was compromised during the summer ... after almost a year of inactivity, not having wow installed and never going to the site. Amazing how they managed to get my details.
Anyways,
I checked my armory yesterday ... someone has been playing my account in the summer for 3 weeks. They used up a 7 day free and a month free reward.
In the activity and achievements i saw a few interesting things:
- They killed the baron in stratholme 685 times !! .. How in godsname did they manage to kill him that often
- 232 Talon King Ikiss kills ... why ???
- They got me the rivendare orse
- All my gear is still there plus some
- They got me exalted with argent dawn
Was I the victim of the [object Window]great friendly hacker???
I know exactly how the 3rd party apps work in WoW amd other games for that matter. I have written and toyed with many of them, but yeah, we are definitely running into a case of semantics more than anything.
I know the limitations(of lack there of) of the 3rd party apps, or add-ons as you prefer to call them. My issue is not with the add-on itself but the source from which the add-on is obtained, no matter the type. That is where the issues arise, not with the 3rd party app(add-on) itself. This is where we seem to not be meeting in our discussion.
This IS the biggie that people need to get through their head though. The addon itself CANNOT contain maliscious code. If however, you download a purported addon that's an EXE file, you're setting yourself up.
The other thing people never mention is Brute Force. Yes, it works. Login servers are constantly being tested by those less savory 'companies'. Routines are setup and thousands, perhaps millions of attempts are made automatically on account names either bought or stolen. Eventually they will hit almost any account that uses a 'standard' 6 letter password.
I'd like to add my own little security tip to this discussion (and after being berated as a complete moron by people at this site a while ago when almost falling for this trap myself).
I've seen four posters in this thread now mention getting "authentic" account hacked emails from Blizzard. Presumably because the email 'sender' info said 'blizzard.com'. And another poster implied that only if the sender info says something other than blizzard.com do you have a phishing email. Well that's not how it works, and these headers can be spoofed. And I'm talking about the detailed mail sender info here too, not just the main 'from' header of an email. YOU'VE GOT TO DO AN IP ADDRESS LOOKUP ON THE SENDER IP TO MAKE SURE IT IS AUTHENTIC.
I've got one of these emails in my delete box right now. And just like always, the detailed sender info says blizzard.com in several different places. But sure enough, an ip lookup on the sender ip address says KOREA. And several people were kind enough to point out to me that Blizzard doesn't send its mail from Korea, heh!
I still get a kick out of the fact that, at least according to the posters on this forum, APPARENTLY, the only people that get hacked are the ones that have not played in at least 3 to 4 months...oh, and the others that get crap talked about them BY the ones that were hacked and have not played in the past 3 to 4 months...
And there are even some people here, that go back as far as a YEAR....
Magic...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
ppl get hacked because they get spam mail and click on the dodgy links, ive never eer paid for wow, just had a trial before and i get them, my wife never plays mmo's and even she gets mailed "on behalf of blizzard",
i only played trials and i get emails supossedly from blizzard saying that im trying to sell my account and stuff and its under investigation..... i just ignore that nonsense, blizzard knows i never suscribed so they dont have to do that... im sure thats some scammers cos i noticed one of the senders didnt say battle.net (it had like 3 T, like batttle) so its fake... i just made a new trial acc and ordered the game and im waiting now...
PS: a good way to avoid accounts getting hack is making an annoying password, mixxing all kind of stuff (numbers, letters, symbols, and make it long... thats harder to get hacked
Comments
till they actually try and crack some of these hackers that seems only use there keyloggers and trojans for wow purposes. I won't be playing the game again. I got hacked twice in a week, after i did a system format, put on my anti virus straight away did updates and used the touch screen for passwords and that i still got hacked. It's got out of hand and 17/87 active ppl that was in the guild i was in got hacked within a afew months, just goes to show that blizzard isn't taking it seriously and only doing whats needed to keep the peace and not tackling the actual problem.
I'm the first to admit I'm a cynic, I've been around a long time, I've seen a lot of things. I wrote papers on virii 15-20 years ago, so I'm no stranger to their methods and techniques.
This is the first time I have suffered at the hands of a hacker.
I seriously have doubts that I'm 100% to blame, if thats the case then by all means I'll take it on the chin, but for me, it's all a bit to straight forward, as a precaution i've had to change a few accounts and passwords and pretty much rendered that email address useless now.
Perhaps an insider looking at old accounts, perhaps a disgruntled employee, after working in IT for 20+ years I've seen a lot ,but I doubt I've seen it all. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Luckily for most people out there, most "hackers" are nothing more than wannabe's that simply use somebody elses toolkit to do their bidding, they seem to think this gives them some credibility as a hacker/leet geezer.
Cannot praise the authenticators highly enough.
We bought them when they first came out, because a friend of ours had just been hacked at the time. After some time, we took a full year's hiatus from WoW.
When we came back last month, everything in our accounts was safe and sound, thanks (we think) to those little authenticators. Accounts that had lain dormant for that long surely would have been hacked, otherwise.
ya, its called practice heh, theyre up to like a million accounts hacked so far, theyll get around to everyone sooner or later!
Dear Garrett Fuller
stop crying and get your self
authenticator there like 6.50......
I wander how many ppl get one of those phishing emails saying their WoW account was hacked and come running and screaming here to post without actually checking to see if they actually were hacked. Or of course the geniuses that click on those phishing links then get mad at Blizzard.
I've had a few phishing emails doesnt mean I actually go where they say..
If I had a dollar for each time I get stuff from banks I dont use or or countries offering me millions then I'd be a rich man.
Yes there are a lot of phishing emails but many of us dont get suckered in to using them.
I got hacked twice within 4 days about 2 years ago about 6 or 7 months after WOTLK launched before the wow account --> battle.net merge, I have no idea how since I never went to any risque wow sites, only curse dot com for my addons. I'm guessing one of my addons I got from curse was infected with a keylogger and those little buggers are never detected by antivirus software, or at least 95% of the time they aren't. So I got my character restored the first time and everything was gravy.. then like 3 days later it happened again. Boy I sure was pissed. I contacted the blizzard customer service again and they went through the trouble of restoring my character again minus my 13k gold that got stolen.. they couldn't give that back. I asked them to keep my account locked pending email verification that I was ready to use it again so I could do a system wipe. I formatted twice using DOD methods including my master boot record just to play it safe and then reinstalled windows and the game clean, and emailed them to unlock the account with a new password. That apparently did the trick and since then I haven't had any trouble at all out of the hacker fags that took all my shit
I took a 6 month break, and when I came back I was hacked. After the same exact experience as the article writer, had my account was up and running. I was mad until I realized I had gotten the account back right before the farmer had hit up the AH. I then sold all the stuff he had farmed and made 20k gold...good day
Some farmer is out there crying into his keyboard.
Playing:
Lotro
Have Played:
EQII,DAOC,SWG,COH,EQ,DDO, Lotro,AoC, EvE,Guild Wars,
Silkroad Online,Aion,and WoW
Favorite of all time: WoW
Waiting on:Swtor,Gw2, and Tera
Hell, I get those phsing emails everyday about my account needing verification and that they notice illegal action with my account. Funny thing, my account has been locked for a couple years now.... Sick of all the spam emails though.
----------------------------
Omol da'Ox
You columnists continue to embarass yourself with your lack of knowledge of what a hack is. Keylogging is not a hack. It may have taken years, but you finally got dumb, downloaded something through a javascript, and had your account logged into.
Please, stop embarassing yourself and this site. Your lack of knowledge in just about everything you write about these days is really discrediting what used to be a site for gamers.
But, then again, the gaming community has gone the way of idiocy. So, maybe you are just keeping up with the times...
EDIT: To all those about to say, well it's not impossible. Yes, it is about as close to impossible as it gets. If someone actually hacked blizzards servers, they wouldn't even bother with your WoW account, they would just go straight for your personal and billing information, which is far more valuable.
Because hackers don't want your credit card, they want your WoW account....bwahahahahahahah
got hacked 2x after I installed the Authenticator.
both times I had quit and cancelled the game, and only found out because some RL friends saw me logged in and tried to talk to me.
1 month after I cancelled my accounts got hacked, with authenticator installed, fishy. I quit again in Sept of this yr and they can hack it all they want I am done
too Gauge23
Hacking is the unauthorized use of your computer, software, or anything else related to the issue.
Keylogging is not hacking I agree. Using the information to gain access to something they are not authorized to use IS
they do but they also encourage them too. Almost a year ago, I was hacked as well. And the person(s) responsible used an authenticator to block any attempt I could make to log on to boot said person out of my account (like in the old days). So the only option I had was to call billing - and yea I had a while to wait too (the same day I was hacked quite a few others were attacked in a similar fashion). But the person that helped me once I was connected was v nice and v efficient with their assistance. I was lucky that none of my characters were deleted/server changed/stripped - the most that happened was that my lock was logged out in her pvp gear and had been used to farm mobs in Storm Peaks (they drop greys that can be sold for quite a bit of gold - or at least it was so at the time).
I read not too long ago about the changes Bliz made about account verification (with the phone call stuff - dont remember the actual thread) and was v pleased - I think hackers might think twice from now on
Sorry to hear about your hack and glad you got your acct back safe and sound.
Cyn
I was hacked once, lost all gold of all my characters.
I f ck hackers!
How does it feel to be hacked by me noobs?
My account was compromised during the summer ... after almost a year of inactivity, not having wow installed and never going to the site. Amazing how they managed to get my details.
Anyways,
I checked my armory yesterday ... someone has been playing my account in the summer for 3 weeks. They used up a 7 day free and a month free reward.
In the activity and achievements i saw a few interesting things:
- They killed the baron in stratholme 685 times !! .. How in godsname did they manage to kill him that often
- 232 Talon King Ikiss kills ... why ???
- They got me the rivendare orse
- All my gear is still there plus some
- They got me exalted with argent dawn
Was I the victim of the [object Window]great friendly hacker???
This IS the biggie that people need to get through their head though. The addon itself CANNOT contain maliscious code. If however, you download a purported addon that's an EXE file, you're setting yourself up.
The other thing people never mention is Brute Force. Yes, it works. Login servers are constantly being tested by those less savory 'companies'. Routines are setup and thousands, perhaps millions of attempts are made automatically on account names either bought or stolen. Eventually they will hit almost any account that uses a 'standard' 6 letter password.
I'd like to add my own little security tip to this discussion (and after being berated as a complete moron by people at this site a while ago when almost falling for this trap myself).
I've seen four posters in this thread now mention getting "authentic" account hacked emails from Blizzard. Presumably because the email 'sender' info said 'blizzard.com'. And another poster implied that only if the sender info says something other than blizzard.com do you have a phishing email. Well that's not how it works, and these headers can be spoofed. And I'm talking about the detailed mail sender info here too, not just the main 'from' header of an email. YOU'VE GOT TO DO AN IP ADDRESS LOOKUP ON THE SENDER IP TO MAKE SURE IT IS AUTHENTIC.
I've got one of these emails in my delete box right now. And just like always, the detailed sender info says blizzard.com in several different places. But sure enough, an ip lookup on the sender ip address says KOREA. And several people were kind enough to point out to me that Blizzard doesn't send its mail from Korea, heh!
I still get a kick out of the fact that, at least according to the posters on this forum, APPARENTLY, the only people that get hacked are the ones that have not played in at least 3 to 4 months...oh, and the others that get crap talked about them BY the ones that were hacked and have not played in the past 3 to 4 months...
And there are even some people here, that go back as far as a YEAR....
Magic...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I usually play games with 4 friends of mine .... all had long inactive accounts in august and we all were hacked in august.
Was it in august that the 7 days free was rewarded ?
ppl get hacked because they get spam mail and click on the dodgy links, ive never eer paid for wow, just had a trial before and i get them, my wife never plays mmo's and even she gets mailed "on behalf of blizzard",
Currently Playing:
......
i only played trials and i get emails supossedly from blizzard saying that im trying to sell my account and stuff and its under investigation..... i just ignore that nonsense, blizzard knows i never suscribed so they dont have to do that... im sure thats some scammers cos i noticed one of the senders didnt say battle.net (it had like 3 T, like batttle) so its fake... i just made a new trial acc and ordered the game and im waiting now...
PS: a good way to avoid accounts getting hack is making an annoying password, mixxing all kind of stuff (numbers, letters, symbols, and make it long... thats harder to get hacked
Sir, you are ridiculously lucky if it only took them 45 minutes to answer the phone. I've never waited under two hours.