Slashdot Mirror
WoW Players Targeted By Windows Flaw Exploit
grimwell writes "The BBC is carrying the story that the ANI flaw is being used to target World of Warcraft players, as hackers search for account details. 'Analysis of that malicious software showed that it lay dormant on a victims machine until they ran World of Warcraft (WoW) at which point it captured login data and sent it to the hacking group ... Research by security firm Symantec suggests that the raw value of a WoW account is now higher than a credit card and its associated verification data.'" Doubtless, any compromised accounts would quickly see their equipment sold, and the resulting gold transferred to another account. This gold would then be sold for US currency to Real Money Traders like the company IGE.
Well, if you could un-soulbind it, then that would probably be a good idea. Also, if you wanted to get rid of some sole binded gold, you could just buy an item, and then sell the item to another character.
Great, so now only someone who has access to my account can steal my gold and items! That solves everything!
I just hope no one ever figures out a way to do this with Slashdot accounts. If WoW accounts are more valuable than credit cards, then Slashdot accounts must be more valuable than, I guess, say Dilithium Crystals or Ewok slaves. I think I have finally going to have to upgrade to Windows98 from Windows95. It probably is mature enough at this point.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
What Microsoft should have done, instead of investing significant amounts of its own resources into the security patch, was tether a huge, yellow exclamation point over the Redmond campus. Wayward WoW players would be inexorably drawn to it where they would find a Non-payroll Personnel Coordinator (NPC) who would relate to them the details of the bug and why it needs to be fixed. Harvesting the collective zeal of the WoW community in such a fashion, the solution to the issue would have been presented to Microsoft promptly and at little expense. Patch notes could even be copied and pasted directly from the resulting Wowwiki page.
Incidentally, I plan to use a similar process to reduce the amount of manual labor around the home.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!