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..

[Aladrin]

What hole have you been hiding in? Anything that happens on Blizzard's servers is THEIR property. They can do whatever they like with it. By 'come down on' he means 'ban accounts'. If these 'gold-selling, account-selling, and item-selling service providers' lose more money than they make, they'll have to give up. It takes time and effort to amass stuff to sell, and there are companies -paying- people to amass it. If they have no way to do their thing, they'll have to stop.

Having said that, short of shutting down all the servers, there's no way to stop it. Even having to start from scratch constantly, they'll still make enough money to keep going and hopefully outlast Blizzard's fury. Blizzard can't afford to hire enough people to police this well enough to stop it.

Re:A cold day in Hell..

[MyIS]

Ah, history is full of examples how making something illegal completely eliminates it. *rolls eyes* More laws make more criminals, and if Blizzard came down on this, they would only drive this arms-race to higher levels. *OR* they could cash in on this (first and foremost), and also improve the game so that IT ISN'T A FRICKEN SECOND JOB!

See, this is why I quit WoW - the fact that 90% of the time one has to "farm" or wait for a raid to assemble, or dully point their running character along some path across the map. I paid them money to escape the daily grind, and look what happened - I got into an even more boring grind. And, of course, there is no way to escape that grind either, because that's the only way to even get to the "fun" 10% of the game.

If Blizzard made the game actually *fun* to play almost all the time, then noone would see the incentive to pay someone else to get through the boring stuff! And voila, no gold-farmers, no hacking accounts, no Slashdot story.

Re:A cold day in Hell..

[MBGMorden]

If Blizzard made the game actually *fun* to play almost all the time, then noone would see the incentive to pay someone else to get through the boring stuff! And voila, no gold-farmers, no hacking accounts, no Slashdot story. Yep, and they'd lose a lot of paying customers shortly afterwards. Here's the rub with games like WoW: they're largely a pissing contest where people like to gloat about how much better stats they have, how much better their gear is, how high their tradeskills are, etc. (and this is coming from someone who actually does play the game quite regularly).

If they took out the grind, the coveted "status" that so many either love to maintain, or love to strive for, vanishes. Everybody is left with just the game for the game's sake, which while arguably the way it "should be" won't work for WoW because the game engine itself isn't the most interesting thing in the world.

That's mainly why all the gear in TBC was so overpowered compared to the original campaign. People were finally getting to the point where many realized they were NEVER gonna make it into BWL, much less Naxx, and starting to lose interest. They gave them some major gear upgrades so that they can feel like "wow, I'm a badass - this stuff blows away the gear I saw those raiding guys walking around with a few weeks ago". Then they get back on the treadmill to try and reach that status again. Stupid, but if you take away the treadmill a lot of them will see no point.

Re:Soulbind Gold?

[FredDC]

That would render the wow economy useless... You would only be able to buy from npc's and not from other players.

Re:Soulbind Gold?

[kalirion]

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!

Re:Awflly big brush you're tarring with...

[pslam]

While I'm no fan of gold farmers and in-game currency traders, is there any evidence to justify naming IGE in that addendum? What justifies that?

Why, you could click on their web page and note the tagline "IGE, Buy WOW Gold, World of Warcraft Gold, FFXI Gil, Final Fantasy XI Gil, Lineage 2 Adena". These guys are assholes and proud of it. They don't deserve apologists.

Maybe I should also dig up the evidence that in the past they were involved in authoring trojans...

OMFG! What about my Slashdot Account?

[Culture]

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.

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