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.

Comments

A cold day in Hell..

[zyl0x]

World of Warcraft is considered a better target for theft than a credit card. What kind of nerds are running those crime syndicates these days? Maybe if Blizzard came down on more of these gold-selling, account-selling, and item-selling service providers, this kind of nonsense wouldn't even be an issue.

Re:A cold day in Hell..

[voice_of_all_reason]

You would have to prove the gold/item trading companies were complicit in any of that. It hasn't worked for online auctions, search engines or ISPs, I don't see why it would work here. They say "we are a medium - it's not our job to investigate every sale for crime. You're the police, you do it."

Re:A cold day in Hell..

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Actually, that got so irritating with pawn shops that many states require pawn shops to record serial number and seller names of any items they take in.

So yes, playing too dumb can bring the law down on you whether you like it or not.

Re:A cold day in Hell..

[dknj]

To: Graff
From: BlizzardAnnouncement@blizzard.com
Reply-To: BlizzardSupport@b1izzard.com
Subject: Blizzard can no longer find your stored password

Dear World of Warcraft User,

We are unable to find your stored password. As you know, you should only have to input your username and password once to connect to our WoW servers from your gaming machine. Unfortunately, it would appear that you have done one of the following:

      - Reinstalled Windows or erased a critical part of World of Warcraft
      - Allowed your system to be compromised
      - Are playing World of Warcraft from a guest computer (eg. Internet Cafe, etc)

To resolve this problem, simply respond to this email with your initial full name, telephone number, username, password, and last 4 digits of your credit card that you used to sign up. A Blizzard support representative will contact you within the next 48 hours to ensure your system is free of malware and verifies your identity.

We are extremely sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you and we will credit your account with a free month of service upon reactivation.

Thank you for choosing Blizzard

Blizzard Support
BlizzardSupport@b1izzard.com

Warning for players upon startup

[Sciros]

Is there some sort of big warning popup in WoW for players as they start the game up? (prior to entering a username/password)? I know that Guild Wars has special "news items" alongside the login form that you can read without having to actually log into your account. It would be cool if Blizzard (heck, and ArenaNet) had a giant warning that came up for the next few days informing people of this issue and of the upcoming fix from MS (or am I confusing my vulnerabilities/fixes here?...). That might help folks out perhaps.

Re:Soulbind Gold?

[Fozzyuw]

Don't WoW players have the option of "soulbinding" their gold and other items, so that only their own character can use them? This would seem to be the easiest fix for the problem of account hacking.

Soulbinding is for items only, which can still be (rare cases, not withstanding) sold to the vendor for gold. Gold cannot be soulbound. Which is why, on hacked accounts, the person is left naked and pennyless. Everything in liquidated into gold and the gold is transferred to another.

However, that is really a interesting idea. How would a game economy handle the idea of no inter -player trade? I would find that an interesting concept to test out. The game would have to be designed where 'all players are equal' in a sort. Everyone could craft any item (or require that you can only get crafted items from NPC vendors). Killing a monster and looting would give full value of money and items to everyone. (A monster drops 10 gold and all 5 players who killed it get 10 gold each. as well as a copy of the weapon or armour it dropped). Heck, a monster would no longer even NEED to drop items. They can just drop money and (as WoW is turning too) special tokens which can be exchanged for items at the high-end.

It would remove an 'economy', for whatever a virtual economy is worth (as technically, everything is limitless). Though I know a lot of people like the idea of 'trade' (I'm one of them), the real question is, does a 'game' really need it? I guess this is close to how Guild Wars works when you only play with NPCs. All items dropped are given to you and gold is reduced by the number of NPC party members. While some items can be dropped from monsters that you use, often find that armour is crafted for you by NPCs who require crafting materials you salvage from item drops and some gold. In essence, it's kind of like only getting gold from monsters.

Do so, does take something away from the 'feel' of the game, but it also can add to the 'work' of the game and I often find this adds to my own 'burning out'. Tough choice, but I like the idea and would like to see how people reacted to a game once they've played it fully.

Cheers,
Fozzy