10K+ sites infected - SE response - RESTORATION, K?

[Lordender]

What a wonderful surprise, another party SE is late to by 5months.

[Hanyoko]

I'm sure many of us have a static IP or a pool they get assigned. Ideally an "allowed list" would stop a majority of issues up untill they start poisoning DNS servers.

[BRP]

Call me crazy, but this isn't the first time they brought up hackers getting into sites. Pretty sure the only thing new here is their change of policy, which I imagine is a good idea to spread the word about.

[Lordender]

SE has more red tape than the redcross and FEMA combined.

[Master of Puppets]

Please tell me how this is going to work:

If your account is compromised outside Information Center business hours, please place a helpdesk call in order to contact a Game Master (GM) to report the details

I don't think someone with a compromised account is going to be able to do this.

And we all know what happens when a friend or alternate account is used to report a compromised account.

A classic case of http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/338/nokeyf1xb4.jpg

[evilpaul]

So were the ABCnews or Yahoo sites they linked to infected? It wouldn't surprise me any.

[terranova]

So were the ABCnews or Yahoo sites they linked to infected? It wouldn't surprise me any.

And the plot thickens!

evolutionary step 1: SE bars IP addresses from china outright (ignoring the chinese players who actually play)

Which would kill my LS ; ;.

[Sesshoumaru]

A Wamoura beats its wings in FFXI and 5 months later SE responds after news articles get printed! However I would be surprised if these articles stemmed from what was going on in FFXI and not from a game like WoW. Nearly 10mil compared to around 500k players. Blizzard just has more resources to allocate to such things as trivial as account security/restoration. I mean who cares about lolsecurity when you have the need to put manpower in to designing campaign?

/sarcasm off

It sucks to all those who got boned with this hacking shit, but don't get any hopes up SE fails hard when it comes to this stuff, a couple of news articles wont change that much.

*bolded trivial to make a point as to perspective, this is not my stance on the matter.

[Tomiko]

In before the lolIE.

lolpc

I'm ok with my ps2 limitations if it means I have more security. :rocl:

OK, maybe I am oversimplifying things here or maybe giving their system too much credit.

How about they put in a tracking system where if an account appears with a new IP address (especially one that originates in China) and attempts to change password, that a huge red flag pops up for investigation? Or that several different accounts that had completely different IP addresses have their passwords changed from the same IP address, that a huge red flag pops up for investigation? Or how about you have to input your whole credit card number before you can change the password?

Or how about all of the above? Seriously, how can I get this to the dev team?

What about being able to set a "home" IP or something where you'd only be able to change the password from that location?

https://secure.playonline.com/supportus/exmf.html

[Sesar]

It's really the entire MMO playerbase that is to blame for all this. People tend to think that because they spend a lot of time doing something that it automatically equates to some numerical dollar value in time spent or gil/gold/gear earned. All we are paying companies like SE and Blizzard for is entertainment; we don't actually own any of this stuff. Even if by some miracle the governments of the world decided to declare virtual items as actually having real world value, it still doesn't change the fact that the items in these games are not ours to sell, or the RMT's, and no one except the respective company has a right to garner a profit from them. These aren't investments or businesses, they are just games meant to entertain us, nothing more.

When people stop placing real world value on things that technically don't exist, the RMT will have no reason to continue. You can't sell something when your entire customer base believes it's worth nothing.

[Souj]

doesnt saving your password stop the password stealing? or no?

[setzor]

doesnt saving your password stop the password stealing? or no?

no.... a lot of people were hacked that merely had their password saved. apparantly the trojan either sniffed outgoing packets or uploaded the POL password file.

[Caldor]

doesnt saving your password stop the password stealing? or no?

no.... a lot of people were hacked that merely had their password saved. apparantly the trojan either sniffed outgoing packets or uploaded the POL password file.

I had my password saved as well and got hacked. When I got hacked I had the days prior of losing my account a strange pol.exe error whenever I left the game/DCed. So it might be that they neither download the POL password file nor sniff the outgoing packets but that the trojan somehow connects to the pol.exe and reads the textfield in which the password is entered. I found a program written in C++(or was it Visual Basic? can't remember) somewhere which could do something like that. When the program was active you could click on textfield in another application and the text in it was transferred into the C++ application. I tried that with the FFXI application but the way it's programmed it didn't work. I'm sure someone worked around that though and the program worked in a similar way. Windows API ftw =P

[Gergall]

Even if by some miracle the governments of the world decided to declare virtual items as actually having real world value, it still doesn't change the fact that the items in these games are not ours to sell, or the RMT's, and no one except the respective company has a right to garner a profit from them.

http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-6140298.html

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/56051

I apologize for the off-topic post.

[fantasticdan]

blizzard has a FAST turn-around on getting characters back, you get a majority if not all your items back... they don't fuck around when it comes to customer service it seems, they don't fuck around giving the banhammer to obvious RMT's or blatant system hackers either. and they serve up at least 20 times the number of active players as ffxi...last i checked.

Is that your personal experience? It took my brother around 5-6 weeks total to get his wow account back and characters/items restored after being hacked. Not to mention blizzard were total asshats about it, customer service guys kept giving us the run around, IE: "Oh, we can't do that over the phone, send an email." "Oh, we can't do that via email, you'll have to call this department".

After they finally investigated the account, they accused him of rmt activity (looked like it had been used for mine botting when he got it back), than accused him of using a powerleveling service (the account had three 70s, and nothing else close to 70...)and said the account was permabanned and there was no way it would ever be restored. Some weeks later they just gave back the account and said don't use anymore third party powerleveling servies, (lol??) From than on it about 10 days to get the other characters and items restored. Thou obviously he couldn't get everything back, socketed gems, enchants, and that sort of thing are all gone.

[ronin sparthos]

5-6 weeks - hell, SE is looking to break 5-6 *months* as far as this issue goes. It seems people have varying levels of satisfaction with Blizzard handling issues but i think it is overwhelmingly dissatisfaction with SEs handling of the issue - the GMs and representatives are only the tip of the iceberg.

Hell, SE doesnt even wanna give you back Rare/EX items without a huge bitchfest about how they can only go back 7days in the records not even going into the hot button issue of unbound items.

Lol at being told to stop using powerleveling services x.x

[Aikar]

pretty sure they legally cant give preventive measures.

If they go post saying do this this and that, then someone still gets hacked... thats alot of shit on them.

It's not SE's responsibility to protect its users PC's for them.

SE did it perfect, and is doing exactly what they should be in this situation - helping people out who do fall victim.

[Sesshoumaru]

Even if by some miracle the governments of the world decided to declare virtual items as actually having real world value, it still doesn't change the fact that the items in these games are not ours to sell, or the RMT's, and no one except the respective company has a right to garner a profit from them.

http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-6140298.html

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/56051

I apologize for the off-topic post.

This makes me smile.

To Gergall:
also governments don't have to place a value on the items, citizens can, which in turn spurs on their respective governments.
While I'm not saying it is going to happen now or even in the next ten years, it will eventually happen.

pretty sure they legally cant give preventive measures.

If they go post saying do this this and that, then someone still gets hacked... thats alot of shit on them.

It's not SE's responsibility to protect its users PC's for them.

SE did it perfect, and is doing exactly what they should be in this situation - helping people out who do fall victim.

I don't think they would be in shit for having specific procedures which increase security. It would be like a car company, or the state (seatbelt laws), being liable for a person who cracks a rib because they wore their seatbelt.

[Sesar]

Even if by some miracle the governments of the world decided to declare virtual items as actually having real world value, it still doesn't change the fact that the items in these games are not ours to sell, or the RMT's, and no one except the respective company has a right to garner a profit from them.

http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-6140298.html

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/56051

I apologize for the off-topic post.

Even if it is "inevitable", players still don't have aything to worry about. The government can't legally tax you for something that doesn't belong to you. By accepting the TOS to play this game, you are openly admitting that you have no rights to anything in the game.

From SE:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/rule/index.html

SEI makes no assurances, representations or warranties whatsoever about the accuracy, currency or continuing availability of this Player Data at any time and reserves its right, at any time and from time to time, without notice to you, to delete all or any part of your Player Data.

From Blizzard:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html

All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Game and all copies thereof (including without limitation any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, musical compositions and recordings, audio-visual effects, storylines, character likenesses, methods of operation, moral rights, and any related documentation) are owned or licensed by Blizzard.

They can do whatever they like and we can't say anything about it. They can delete anyone's character or items on a whim and no one has any grounds to stop them. We agree to this everytime we sign onto these games. Of course, doing that wouldn't be a very good business practice for them, and these companies realize that, but they still have the capacity to do it, if they choose.

It sucks that all this is happening and peoples work is being destroyed all for the sake of some chinese man's wallet expansion pack. It does feel like a loss when you work hard to do something, only to watch it disappear in one day, but the bottom line is, nothing will change until people start accepting the fact that they don't own any of this stuff and the only people that can make money off of these games is the manufacturer, not the player or the chinese gold farmer. Gil is only worth what people will pay for it and if no one wants pay for it, there is no reason to sell it, and no reason to keep hacking people's accounts to get it.

[ronin sparthos]

It sucks that all this is happening and peoples work is being destroyed all for the sake of some chinese man's wallet expansion pack. It does feel like a loss when you work hard to do something, only to watch it disappear in one day, but the bottom line is, nothing will change until people start accepting the fact that they don't own any of this stuff and the only people that can make money off of these games is the manufacturer, not the player or the chinese gold farmer. Gil is only worth what people will pay for it and if no one wants pay for it, there is no reason to sell it, and no reason to keep hacking people's accounts to get it.

Not quite, the only people making money are the manufacturers and the RMT. (weather that people cashing in for gil and/or professional gilfarmers - both are RMT) It is the average player who is screwed from both ends, the company doesnt care about the data and the CGF are in it purely to make money - so your doublefucked kinda. You will never eliminate RMT, so the profits from that will always come off the back of the creators of the game and the creators will never give you any 100% assurance that your data may not be permanently screwed/fucked over by RMT because they dont want to end up backpeddaling on words.

Cheaters will always exist, RMT will always exist - all the 'average joe' can do is hope that the game creators give them some leeway to better themselves security/customer support-wise and hope that their personal security is enough

Id say the RMT total have made substantial millions in simple gil transactions - the amount of money they are making is worth going to the most drastic of measures to get. Making it seem like the RMT are bummed when accounts get banned is laughable - all it means is that a new plan must be formulated and the product must move faster.