Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
are blizzard behind hacked accounts???
This discussion has been closed.
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
Naw - especially if you use Hotmail or Gmail - I have 3 seperate Hotmail accounts that have never been associated with my WoW account - and I recieve the "phishing" emails on all of them.
Funny thing is, the email I created specifically for the Battle.Net conversion has never recieved spam or phishing emails of any kind - at all (Then again - it's a pretty random combination of words and numbers)
Question though - can you still "Brute force" Blizzard's login server? I know you used to be able too. Considering one computer could be set up to make thousands of attempts per second - just imagine what the 'sweat shops' in the far East could be doing (some of them have thousands of employees and systems) Just more food for thought - allthough I love all the rampant speculation
!!!
Heh,
Yeah, I do admittedly have some hotmail accounts. Still.... Those mails are annoying even if they go straight to the junkmail bin. Heh. Next I'll be getting them for Guild Wars. Thankfully ArenaNet customer service is very good if I ever did have a question about my account. I haven't played WoW in forever but still been playing StarCraft off an on. Not sure why Blizzard customer support is so hard to get a hold of. At least on phone anyways. I wonder if they will ever make something close to a Warcraft 2.
Well, to honest, I don't know who you are. The basic reality is the the overwhelming majority of security breaches are at the user end. Am I blowing smoke? Actually, I manage one of the most active web sites in the US, so I am very familiar with security both commercially as well as in the federal environment.
I can count on one hand the number of serious attempts to hack the site, and still count on that same hand the number of times a rogue employee has used information inappropriately (totals to exactly zero). There aren't enough hands on this planet that can count the number of mindless script-kitties that hit the site and go nowhere.
I have personally dealt with 5 people in the past 3 years that have had their accounts hacked (game or otherwise). In all 5 cases, it was ultimately on their end. 2 of the people had above average security knowledge and used appropriate security measures on their machines (e.g. AV, firewall, anti-spyware). It's always difficult to tell exactly how they got hacked, but 3 of them had keyloggers on their systems...1 of them got their WoW account hacked in the first wave of Java Null Pointer exploits in a malicious flash advertisement (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/adobe-flash-drive-by-attacks-redux/1198). He claimed that he didn't click on any flash advertisements, but perhaps he clicked one accidentally, or a mouse-over initiated it. He had decent security software, but didn't have the absolute latest version of flash, and his account was hacked as a result. He wasn't an idiot. He just surfed into something unexpected and hit the wrong place at the wrong time. 1 person (who should have known better) got suckered into a beautifully rendered duplicate of a website, and entered her login credentials. I've personally experienced a DNS poisoning redirection (alternate site was poorly done, so it didn't work...but it would have worked if they would have spent the time on the site to make it look correct).
Nobody can have their security defenses at 100% at all times...you will always be at least a little bit behind on patches and updates. And always keep in mind that malicious software is typically out before the security companies can update their software. For anyone to state that their security defenses are perfect is naive to say the least.
As to your particular case jessian, I can not offer anything better than "I don't know". But understanding the realities of security in the modern age, I can't honestly subscribe to your notion that Blizzard is behind the hacks. Of course they are making money on the authenticators...but they make even more money on your subscription fee...so they aren't looking to mess that gravy train up at all. Similarly, Blizzard makes a lot more money keeping your confidence to sell the next 2 versions of Starcraft 2 than selling a few dollar authenticator.
I wouldn't say they are behind hacked accounts, but I do believe they are doing something to push authenticators because I find it alittle odd that I started receiving spam emails from Blizzard around the time I started my 10 day WotLK account around Aug. & Sept of this year. And to add those are the only spam emails I've ever received in my email since I don't just go throwing my email at every little service, I use backup emails for that type of garbage. And I think we can all agree they don't give a rip about item/gold/account/powerleveling services that go on because it is two subscriptions for them which is what... more money... exactly. And kickbacks are a possibility to prevent those RMT websites from being taken to court. Tax free money under the table FTW....
And really couldn't you just argue that you traded that person in real life a few nice WoW TCG cards in return for some gold? And powerleveling I doubt would be too terribly hard to get around by logging into their account from their location via some sort of VPN setup. The only problem you would have is account selling now that I'm sure would be a rather tough cookie to complete without being flagged in at least some way.
I cant see where Blizzard would have anything to gain by hacking accounts, burning man hours to replace what was stolen, often not only for a players toons but for things stolen from a guild bank all to make $6.50 on an authenticator sale.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
its not just the authenticator sales, why did blizzard move over to battle.net? was security that easy to hack at blizzard or did they see an easy way to make money.
heres an example.
10,000 accounts hacked monthly (whether its blizzard or paid gold sites) they strip down all 10k accounts and get say for arguement sake.
5million gold, 4,700 items to pwn off in the AH and so forth, they then charge those 10k, 7$ for the authenticator
raking in 70,000 quid. Then those 10,000 players that have to catch up pay gold sites $100 each (for arguement sake) to get their 5million gold back. thats, 1 million in cash giving blizzard a % of that back
Repeat this every month,
Subs for 11 million players + hacked accounts + gold sales and etc etc... a lot of money to make.
Reality check, Blizzard don't NEED to hack accounts they are already making billions as a perfectly legitimate business, are there maybe 1 or 2 disgruntled employees making a few bucks on the side? possibly.
Someone needs a brain scan if they believe there's an ounce of truth in this B.S. conspiracy theory.
A couple of caveats to your argument ... ;P
There aren't 11 million accounts to hack. 6+ million of those are Chinese, are not really accounts, and are not under Blizzards control (direct or otherwise)
Gold is at $2 per thousand now. Selling a million gold per month is barely going to cover 1 support persons salary - and definately no where near enough to cover the team that currently works there.
Authenticators are sold at cost - and actually free for people who bother to look.
Could Blizzard be involved in this racket? Sure! Would it be a revenue generator? Hell no - not with the price of gold VS the costs associated with investigating and restoring hacked accounts
not my company but the one my wife works for. lets see
they answer phones as a third party call center for
one of the largest cell phone providers in the us (giving them the ability to make account changes after you call and the collect your info)
one of the largest credit card companies in the us (giving them your credit card and validation info after you answer the sec questions)
and one of the largest insurance compaines in the us (giving them your social security and medical history)
all have more customers than blizzard.....
obviously I can't post the names of the corporations but use a little imagination and you can probably guess 2 out of the 3
I get one of those so called emails from blizzard every week. The link that they send me takes me to a website that can steal my account info.
I also want to chime in here and reinterate...blizzard themselves (the execs) don't have to be behind anything for what the OP is saying to be true. It just takes one bored rogue employee.
Also, I want to say that I am sure the OP prob doesn't believe that it's 100% the fault of a blizz employee just a small percentage of it.
This is a large scope issue. What is more likely the case is that some rogue employees are selling info, some people have key loggers, some people have security holes and some people are simply idiots and give out their info.
Locked: Duplicate Thread
Please refer to this thread to continue the conversation: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/288999/Official-My-account-has-been-compromised-Thread.html