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World of Warcraft's Brand New Rootkit
Captain Kirk writes "We all know that World of Warcraft has checked for hacks to ensure a safe game environment for all players. The latest version of these checks goes beyond anything seen so far in that what is being checked is now completely encrypted. Obviously this hits bot writers as can be seen from these complaints, But it also strikes at the privacy of all users. Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer. That can't be right."
1 computer for gaming
1 computer for everything else
Sorry if you can't afford a second, but that's how I do it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Then don't play. It really IS that simple. If you're having too big of a problem with that, put the mouse down and go join a support group.
You've already given up your life when you start playing WoW. What do you have to keep private?
I canceled when they started adding things to their detection kit. When I saw it reading registry keys (regmon) it had NO business reading, I canceled. Did it need to read the activation keys for Windows? Absolutely not.
Summary of TFA: WoW Warden now selects one of many hash algorithms and uses it in server communication. Blog author gets his panties in a bunch because Blizzard could replace one of these hash algorithms with something that collects PRIVATE PERSONAL DATA, and NO ONE WOULD EVER KNOW. A misleading Slashdot headline and poorly-written blurb is generated, and the rest is academic.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
So, now a "rootkit" is any program that does something we're not sure of?
I thought a rootkit was a program designed to take control of a system remotely or offer access to that system? This is just an obfuscated program (encrypted is a bit strong for something that is "decrypted" on your own system where you can watch its behavior).
Seriously, if this is the worst that Blizzard does, I'm a happy camper. They really do have serious problems with their users being exploited, and detecting these problems early is all good. In my case, they'll see everything that's in my virtual Windows environment under Wine.
Now, if someone proves that they're reading personal files out side of the Windows system directory or the WoW installation, then we can talk. Until then, this is a non-issue.
Does the thing hide itself? Can't you just uninstall WoW? (Maybe you can't but maybe you need mental help.) Ya, you don't know what it is doing but you don't know what most programs are going unless you reverse engineer them. I think this is just the cheaters getting their panties in a twist. Especially because it means the end to a real source of income for those who harvest gold and sell it in the real world.
I play World of Warcraft. As a subscriber that plays this game I am ok with Warden as it stands. I want to play a game where hackers and cheaters are caught and banned. I know a lot of people despise the speed hacks and of course the gold farmers, so I don't see what the fuss is all about.
The likely hood of Blizzard hacking or stealing personal data is very small. They know that they could lose their cash cow by doing anything malicious with this information/software.
For those that fear credit card and personal information being lifted, I'm a little baffled. When you sign up for an account you enter most of the same personal info that is going to be on your PC anyway, and unless you are using game cards they already have at least one of your credit cards on file. All information that subscribers gave up willingly.
That aside, I did read the article and find the technology fascinating.
If you start your architectural design from the assumption that the client is a malicious bot, then you can design out vulnerability. Blizzard chose not to do that. They thought that they could enforce trust on the client side, and let clients make decisions about (oh, just for example) player position. Well, that makes them idiots. Idiot savants, maybe, but idiots none-the-less.
The client cannot be trusted. Clients request, servers decide and dictate. Let the client anticipate and drift its local world state all you like, but the server must never, ever, accept a state change from the client, only requests. That's the way it has to be, unless you - demonstrably - want to play catchup for ever and a day. And if you get caught in that hole, then you need a spade the size of WOW's playerbase and Blizzard's resources in order to keep digging it deeper.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer.
You do realize that *any* software you install on your computer can do this? Unless you have read the full source code and compiled it yourself (Ignoring the possibility of a trojan'd compiler) there is a possibility that a program could do these things. So what's new?
Steam games have "Valve Anti-Cheat" (VAC), which is similar in principle to the Blizzard Warden. Other games use Punkbuster, which uses the same strategy to detect cheats. All of these programs scan your machine's memory and look for the signatures of known cheats. The mechanism used to carry out the scanning and report the results is deliberately obfuscated to make it difficult to reverse engineer the process and send fake results. All three of these programs are spyware. But you agree to the use of each within the EULA of whatever game you are playing.
Warden has always had the ability to be updated with arbitrary code as you play. The observations of this article are nothing new: Blizzard has always been able to access files on your computer, just by sending the appropriate program to Warden. It seems that they have recently been sending more complex programs, generated for each client, so the current generation of programs that spy on Warden no longer work. The arms race continues.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
They clearly state in their TOS that they do this (Section 14)
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html
Don't like it? Don't play the game. Very simple.
And in fact, when you first sign up for an account, Blizzard gives you 30 days to return the game for a *full refund* if you don't agree to the TOS and don't wish to play. That seems pretty fair IMHO, and far more than most game companies will do.
- Roach
Out of curiosity, how would you go about detecting keyloggers and/or bots without reading the registry? Or do you just feel that Blizzard shouldn't attempt to detect abuse? Myself, I'm a player and I WANT Blizzard to look for such abuse. If someone finds that Blizzard's bot is doing something that's actually wrong (e.g. sending personal data back to home base, not just reading the registry), then I'll be the first to pressure them to fix it. However, if they're just scanning for malicious software that doesn't actually seem like a problem.
It is CERTAINLY not a rootkit according to any definition I've ever heard.
> why not organize and complain to Blizzard?
Players: "Blizzard, your malware sucks, and you suck for using it!"
Blizzard: "What? Sorry, these piles of money you keep forking over to us every month kind of muffle the sound in here."
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I simply do not understand some of the people's comments on this matter. "I feel more secure with this" isn't a very good argument. Games have bugs: if a game can access and modify your entire system, a bug exposing this would be very dangerous.
Game developers have no right whatsoever to delve into your personal assets no matter what the intent might be. There are various examples known world wide such as in Argentina (1980's) when all of the communications were monitored by the government to "capture the terrorists." Hackers and cheaters are not even remotely in that realm, so my computer which holds very confidential information should not be monitored. (Though it might make an interesting paper comparing hackers to terrorists)
When I drive on the South Florida roads I am constantly monitored by cameras at each stoplight, I don't particularly would like to be monitored in my own home where I still have the illusion of privacy. However naive that might sound.
And all Sony did was install a program on their music CDs that ensured someone had a legit copy of the CD (copyright infringement is a HUGE problem with IP).
(waves magic wand) Reducto ad absurdum!
He said activation keys for windows, so if the detection kit was really reading those then that's bad.
Anyway why would a bot or keylogger need to write to the registry?
Would be good if you could restrict the user account you use to run wow to only talking to blizzards IP range and local IP.
If they have just changed Warden and I'm no longer happy to agree to their terms of service, can i return wow and BC for a full refund? Don't I agree to let them run what software is in the box when i agree to the ToS? If they change the software can't i change my mind?
I don't play WOW, I don't get why people are obsessed with it, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the point, which is this:
1. Many people like playing WOW. It brings them happiness to play it.
2. The provider of WOW has instituted a policy that is objectionable.
There is no reason on God's Green Earth why 1 and 2 above need inevitably lead to:
3. Therefore people should give up WOW that brings them happiness because there is a problem with how it is provided.
Because, frankly, that's just stupid. Less extreme measures should be tried first, like salvaging that which is valuable by attempting to change that which is objectionable. Cutting your losses and running is, if ever, a last resort when attempts to fix the problem have utterly failed. Now, this is "just a game", and so it is reasonable for people to only put as much effort into salvaging it as pleasure they get out of it; it's not like fighting for your rights or anything. I just have a really hard time comprehending the general attitude around here being that as soon as someone (esp. a corporate entity) does something to find questionable that the only response is immediate and extreme measures(tm). Human beings who do care, if even fleetingly, about things other than money run these companies; they want people to enjoy their products, and would be fools not to listen to valid concerns even if only for self-interested reasons.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
I can't believe I'm forgoing a full complement of mod points to respond to you, but I get tired of seeing people go ape-shit whenever they use tools like regmon and filemon without having clue one as to what they're seeing.
Pretty much any program will make tons of accesses to registry keys that would at first glance appear to have nothing to do with that program, because the program loads a bunch of Windows libraries that access those registry keys whenever they're loaded. The same goes for IE cookies, for any program that uses the IE rendering libraries to render HTML (including things like the frontend patchers for games like EverQuest), because those libraries go through your cookies just the same as IE does when it first loads.
Sorry that you felt it necessary to cancel your WoW account because you didn't understand how your computer works, but at least it gives you a lot more spare time for making tin-foil hats.
This whole problem is cause because gold is so important to the game.
They could minimize these problems with a number of basic fixes.
1) Don't allow the AH to sell anything for more then 5 times the vendor cost. Which results in artificial control of the market, which primarily impacts those who don't have enough gold to exploit the system, and results in anything that's unreasonably capped being sold player-to-player outside the auction house. Turns out economies (virtual or not) are quite resilient to this kind of ham-handed attempt at control. 2) Lower the cost of items. How you can charge 5000 Gold to learn to use a mount and not expect a spike in Gold selling and farming is beyond me. Actually, they did the reverse, and it's worked VERY well. The only people buying gold now are typically the newbies who need 10-100 gold to get started. 5000g costs an astronomical amount of money because it takes so long for a low-level player to get. It's a root kit in that it can gain access to anything on your computer and send it to Blizzard. So can the World of Warcraft game itself. That's a rootkit too? Oh PS: rootkit != any invasion of privacy. Rootkits are specifically those programs that subvert the security of your system. This simply doesn't do that. To trust warden is to trust that:
they will never hire a bad dishonest employee, You can replace "warden" in that sentence with the name of any software you've ever run.
This was from my post:
Now, this is "just a game", and so it is reasonable for people to only put as much effort into salvaging it as pleasure they get out of it; it's not like fighting for your rights or anything. I just have a really hard time comprehending the general attitude around here...
And this was from yours:
This is a video game. Finding another MMO to take up your excess time is a matter of $50 at worst, since just about all of them worth playing give free trial periods. Your friends that you met in WoW will still be your friends when you stop playing if they are real friends and not merely aquaintances. There is such a thing as instance messenger and voice chat. Gain some perspective.
I've got perspective (tm). It is only a game, and as such, like I said, people who have a problem with how it is provided should raise a stink only so far as the enjoyment they get from the game is worth it to them. Since, after all, it is their money, and not yours or mine. Me, I prefer to read books, watch movies, chat (in meatspace) with friends, and post to /. for my entertainment. That's what brings me enjoyment. These folks, who like WOW, like other things than I do and spend money in ways consummate with that enjoyment. If one were to look at the publishing industry with a magnifying glass, one would see all sorts of hideous warts; the way they treat most authors is abominable, their editorial policies are groupthink L.C.D. crap, etc. etc.. And yet, I think it would be plainly idiotic to suggest to a person that they should just stop reading books because there are problems with the way books are provided as a product. There are other, better ways. They are harder, less self-satisfyingly smug, and not always successful. And yet, they are the ways that actually make things better, as opposed to the prevailing message which seems only to suggest that one try to insulate oneself from the world as it goes to shit around you.
Look, the way in which people think and how they act when it comes to trivial matters reflects very well how they tend to react to important ones. People whose first reaction is cut and run from every negative thing tend to do so not just in MMO-land but also in politics. People complain a great deal about political apathy, but apathy comes from the mindset that the other methods I have been speaking about (e.g. organize, petition, complain) are ineffective and are thus never tried. Of course they fail; nobody does them. In many cases, they've forgotten how. The mindset here reflects the mindset in the wider landscape, and so if you think I fail to have perspective because it's "just a game", that may be because this attitude is corrosive wherever it appears and I find that way of thinking to be destructive in areas of life where it matters a damn well lot.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)