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Blizzard Security Is Sadly Inadequate and They Are Intentionally Ripping People Off, There Is Proof Of This! |
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| GG BLIZ....LET'S SCREW STUFF UP AGAIN!!! |
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Credit for this post goes to Sheeana (Level 34 Dranei
hunter) of Shadows of the Void Guild on Gorgonnash
Realm This was recently posted in the general forums at Blizzard by s friend of mine that is leaving the game due to changes....he is not alone, as many others are leaving as well. Seems that most of the new accounts are actually 'Smoke & Mirrors' of the farmers
"I am so exited that Blizzard is finally
making the game so great for us little folk. I can use the honor and
badges I farmed so far to purchase all the new Season 3 gear...after
all, I only have to work for a couple of weeks to get my arena
team's score up where it usually is, and from then on I have this
great gear to wear, with no strings attached! |
| Seems like the right take on WoW |
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Credit for this post goes to Onishfu (Level 70 Gnome Warlock)
of TBaggers Anonymous LMB Guild on Dark Iron Realm This guy is right on! WoW is a money-making juggernaut,
and there’s no arguing it. It has been an incredible financial
success. Much like American Idol, however, WoW is popular but
terribly bad. And the blame here lies on most of YOU (the playerbase)
as well as the developers. |
| 65,000 + WoW Hacked Accounts Linked To Identity Theft |
| story to follow |
| QUESTION SENT, WAITING ON REPLY |
| story to follow |
| REPLY FROM BLIZZARD |
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01/18/2007 - UPDATE story to follow |
| QUESTION SENT, WAITING ON REPLY |
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01/16/2007 0. NEED INFO ON TBC AFFECT WITH ITEM RESTORE |
01/16/2007 08:22:47 AM PST |
| WELL BLIZ GG |
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01/15/2007 - Yes, More News Blizzard in their infinite wisdom bordering on internet fraud and discrimination against it's account holders, has indeed by lack of action, lost many, many accounts this fair night.... Estimates are in the thousands, but by the time the release is done, it will probably be nearer to the tens of thousands of senior subscriptions. In all their positioning for the release of The Burning Crusade expansion, they have forsaken the accounts of players that got them where they are. BEWARE NEW SUBSCRIPTION HOLDERS!!! IN THREE TO SIX MONTHS THIS WILL BE YOU AS WELL. IF YOU DON'T MIND PLAYING FOR HOURS AND HOURS JUST TO SEE YOUR GAINS STOLEN, THEN PLAY/PAY AHEAD!!! |
| PROOF OF DISCRIMINATION BY BLIZZARD??? |
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01/15/2007 - Major Breaking News!!! Blizzard, Vivendi, World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade On The Ropes? Seems like we definitely have a case for
discrimination against Blizzard/Vivendi! The story about the guy
that knew the GM getting his account back after only 4-days is
indeed true; he has sent me the emails and screenshots of the
in-game mail to prove it. |
| BREAKING NEWS!!! |
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01/13/2007 - Breaking News As many as 350,000 game accounts in USA alone have sworn to leave Blizzards World of Warcraft as of the release of Blizzard's expansion 'World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade'. This is mainly due to stolen/hacked accounts that have not been restored, Lack of security and terrible customer service to those located in the USA (remember stolen or 'hacked' accounts may also mean your personal and credit info gets taken as well). Seems as though membership has actually waned in the US while China has gone wild (most of the keylogger 'phone home' IP addresses are located in China). This past spring the membership was substantially different, with approximately 5 million subscribers and most were located in North America, when now with 8 million it seems only 25% are in North America and most (3.5 Million) are in China. This is very disturbing news for Bliz since it seems WoW may be on the way out here at home (their base country). Good going Bliz, let's alienate the ones that put us here and concentrate on bragging that you have more gold farmer/account hackers. Oh and by the way Blizzard, your secret is out, it only takes about 30 seconds (ref: Blizzard Tech Support Employee) to roll back a character to a time before the hack/theft taking place, so what's your excuse? Well, I think we all know the answer...new content and new accounts (no matter whether they are legit or thieves accounts, are much more important to you then the established accounts. Sounds like all you want is bragging rights here, well watch out for Age of Conan, because most of the players we've talked to are going there, upon it's release, if something isn't done quickly...before TBC. With that in the future and the criminal migrating to a new game as well, you'll be back down to a more manageable 4-5 million accounts or less, before you know it. Kind of reminds us of what happened to Star Wars Galaxies, doesn't it and they are almost non-existent now, WAKE UP BLIZ, YOUR EGO IS WINNING AND YOUR PLAYERS ARE SCREAMING FOUL! |
| BLIZZARD DISCRIMINATES??? |
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UPDATE!!! 01/12/2007 - Account restore neglected for
speaking out against Blizzard WoW security policies!!! Isn't that
discrimination? |
| OMFG, BLIZZARD We Are Ashamed To Be Partnered With You!!! |
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01/09/2007 - Update I just received this today |
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* one of the definitions of fraud, "Intentionally selling an item advertised as serviced by you, but you have no intention of servicing" |
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Major Update! |
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01/05/2007 - UPDATE WoW! 900+ more accounts hacked in just 4 hours and survey reveals extreme drop in established account playtime! Is this a new trend or the beginning of the downfall of WoW as we know it! Just hours after Blizzard making their statement about not concentrating on the single player for account restoration another 900+ accounts were hacked by at least one Keylogger that sent its information to a number of IP addresses located in China**. When told of this, "This is absolutely unacceptable, Blizzard has the tools, why don't they use them or implement a simple IP based security login solution", stated Mr. Rick Hawkins, CEO and Chief Design Engineer for one of the top custom gaming system manufacturers in the Northeast and a Microsoft, Intel, AMD & nVidia Partner. "A simple redesign of their login systems with a few 'Hooks' of their own would all but eliminate keyloggers as a threat, for now I wouldn't recommend anyone using their credit card to pay these accounts, it is too dangerous". As for the survey that was posted here last month, it showed a sharp decline of approximately 62% in playtime among senior* WoW gaming accounts. There were over 4000 participants in the poll and it showed a very alarming trends (results below), you can also take the survey here Of 4026, 1074 are newer players and do not fit the demographic
for this survey***. Of 2952, 1121 Played more than they did 1 year ago (37.9%) Of 2952 Seniors, 1831 stated they played at least 50% less
then they did a year ago (62.0%) Boredom and security issues have plagued 57.6% of the senior players that participated in this survey. I don't know about you, but this is something Blizzard should pay attention to, almost 25% of the senior players over-all are afraid to login, that's ludicrous. No matter how many new accounts you get (it's how they advertise), if the older accounts don't play, the numbers are skewed and misleading. * Senior is defined as an established account of
more than one year |
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Major Update! |
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01/04/2007 - UPDATE! News from Blizzard - from Blizzard Account Services, phone conversation13:34PM (recorded/transcribed) after 43 minute wait on hold. All account security investigation personnel are to busy to accept outside calls from subscribers over issues of item replacement or hacked accounts, due to the nature of the account dumps initiated by Warden, Blizzard's new security watch dog. Programs such as AVG free anti-virus, Zone Alarm Pro firewall, and even AIMfix (a program designed, in partnership with AOL, to remove AIM viruses and trojans) have been named among the possible false triggers to Warden and that there should be an official announcement forthcoming. When, I called again, I stated that it was not due to warden as the account had not been banned and was told by Blizzard that they are not concentrating on smaller issues at this time, but instead are looking in to mass account reactivations. Sounds like they do not care about their single account holders or that any of us have been hacked by the lack of security in their company. I have even reported this to the IFCC (Internet Fraud Complaint Center-->FBI) and hopefully at least someone will look into making Blizzard more accountable to its subscribers and their security needs, such as they did with a few others 3-4 years ago. In the meantime I guess we are supposed to keep paying for an account that we can't use and they have no intention on resolving in an appropriate period of time...is that not one of the definitions of fraud, 'Intentionally selling an item advertised as serviced by you, but you have no intention of servicing'....very interesting, huh? |
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Major Update! |
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01/03/2007 - UPDATE!
It is confirmed! A hacked version of the background downloader did come out of Blizzard, bringing with it a rather nasty little custom keylogger. This explains a lot since there were so many accounts hacked and stolen since the last patch. Now that we know it must have been an inside job*, please look at these links to satisfy your curiosity. What kind of company is this, Gaming or Spyware? You Decide!!! TG Daily BBC News These are just a few, should you decide to Google 'Warden World of Warcraft', you will find many, many more! * There has been no denial
or confirmation of this from Blizzard |
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World of Warcraft.....We can only hope they wake up at Blizzard! |
| 01/02/2007 World of Warcraft boasts some of the most robust gameplay and content on the planet and that is the draw to the common gamer, what they do not tell you is the security nightmare that it also boasts for the home user! From keyloggers to trojans this gaming mmorpg is a virtual nightmare for the system that runs it. AVG, Avira, Kapersky Mcafee and Norton's miss almost all of these keyloggers until it is too late. By the time these little custom programs are added to their DB's the damage is done and it isn't just limited to the gaming login and password, it can also lead to credit, banking, online account and full identity theft. Granted, Blizzard now has the largest online client list, but they are also way behind their competition and the corporate or real world in security with the lack of IP linked security triggers, they rely completely on a launcher that has little or no effect what-so-ever on the keyloggers that are indeed stealing thousands of accounts per month, resulting in thousands of dollars worth of lost time and use of these account for their clients. Taking up valuable time and resources to re-instate and restore these stolen/hacked accounts, instead of putting the time where it would do the most good by increasing the security of the game and login system itself. There have even been rumors of their background downloader itself being a carrier at one time of a very wise keylogger that led to thousands of accounts being stolen, this would be an extremely suspicious event indeed. The amount of account bannings linked with these thieves is staggering, by Blizzard’s own account they have banned more than 100,000 accounts in total. All-in-all a great game, but is it worth the money to have your entire identity stolen and think of it this way adults are not the only victim. Let's say you have an account for Napster and pay so much per download, if your account info is stolen then someone could download hundreds of songs before being stopped and the account holder would be liable to pay for these. Or even take for instance the mother that does her banking on the same system as her children that happen to play World of Warcraft and after a few days can no longer pay her bills because some international hacker just stole her financial identity. Some may say that this type of security should fall to the consumer, and normal antivirus and firewalls should be our responsibility, however when it comes to these keyloggers their rising popularity and irresponsible security is what allows them to flourish so wildly, when a simple IP security tag refreshed at the end of each session and set to trigger the rest of their 'already in place' though inadequate security measures would surely do the trick. Granted this is only one instance of the security of these types of online programs with inadequate security that is wreaking havoc on the home user's system, but at this time it is indeed the most prevalent and a fairly simple solution is at hand. Ideas include blizzard supplying a downloadable anti-keylogger program for little or no cost, as these programs rarely cost more than $20-30 to begin with, why not sell it for $10-15 and make even more money as it seems what they are more intent on getting rather than supplying the service they insist that they give us. Not only that, they could probably develop their own specialized anti-keylogging program for pennies and include it in a patch or offer it for download Or even a simple IP based approach to these things – Blizzard already logs our IP address every time we log in on our game accounts, these are also the same account logins for payments, storage of credit cards, passwords, etcetera, maybe not the ideal situation but let’s see what we can do with this. Once you log out of the game, they refresh the stored IP address. Should you or a hacker attempt to login from a different IP address, this triggers your secret answer request which is already part of their mundane security system. Now this secret answer system, you set up at the beginning of creating your account and you do not have a manual means of changing it, Blizzard manages that. Once you have logged into your account or game with the correct answer, it is then wiped clean so no one can use it again and an email is automatically sent to the account holders registered email address containing a random question and answer for the next time if need be. Yes it would be the responsibility of the account holder to write this info down or just print it out and keep it in a safe place. The email would of course have to explain that you account attempted to login from a different IP that would also alert you to the possibility of a keylogger being present on your system. This process would be a very simple solution to a quickly growing problem and all but eliminate keyloggers from being able to be used to steal accounts the way they are now. To all the people that say someone would just write a smarter keylogger, I say no…let me explain. We will address ‘Hook’ type keyloggers (90% of the ones written) Keyloggers are very small programs that monitor the keystrokes you make and what program they correspond to. The key word here is small, so small in fact that they slip in almost completely undetected by the average internet security program and just like a virus they can be disguised to look or act like another program, or even be embedded into a program that you may intentionally want to or have downloaded. Many of them are recognized by the system user because of this and they in turn tell their firewall or internet security system to ignore it. If someone were to write a larger more sophisticated program to get around this type of system, it would really defeat its purpose and even hamper its ability to perform. So it wouldn’t be done, because it would be too much of a hassle for the criminal. To conclude this story, I presented this type of solution to blizzard and they quickly dismissed the whole issue stating they could not use ideas from an outside source….. Okay first off, I am a partner to Blizzard as well as many other companies like Microsoft, Intel, AMD & nVidia and an outsider I am not. So much so that one of their competitors (I can’t say which one) picked this up and are trying to implement it. Once done they will be advertising as the most secure MMORPG on line. I also realize that for dial customers or any ISP that changes IP’s constantly that this may be inconvenient, but for the safety and security, it would be well worth it. We can only hope that Blizzard comes to their sense and implements something of their own that compares to this. |
| Layered Security Suggestions |
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