Escapist article on FFXI Account Theft

[Francisco II]

How someone can get 22 viruses is beyond me

Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire... other shitty P2P software that followed original Napster - pretty sure those fucked over their share of systems.

[Tricen]

How someone can get 22 viruses is beyond me

Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire... other shitty P2P software that followed original Napster - pretty sure those fucked over their share of systems.

Kazaa/Limewire got me so many viruses and shit, I ruined 2 pcs. Oh the old days of downloading porn as a child. <_________________<

[ringthree]

Too bad that these are the same reporters that two years ago were saying that RMT were a great cottage industry, and they were just hard working people trying to carve out a niche in the new digital age.

It all smacks of hypocrisy to me.

They were talking about second life iirc, where rmt is both legal and encouraged.

I am talking about video game reporters in general when they were reporting on RMT in MMO's in general.

Because every writer for every magazine agrees 100% on every issue and are in fact all clones of Jango Fett, right?

Seriously, are you retarded? Do you know what "in general" means?

[ronin sparthos]

It's cruel to say, but people really need to be educated about online safety. This is no different from learning how to secure the doors and windows of your home. Or learning that you need to watch both ways when you cross the street.

Society teaches you to lock your doors from the bad guys, you learn that in grade school and mom/dad/family teach you.

Society teaches you to look both ways before you cross or you.... die/lolgetrunover. You learn this at home and at school.

How many places/parents/family members tell you to use Firefox, how to sweep for viruses/badware/malware/trojans etc, how to reformat a PC, what boot sectors are, what an SQL injection is etc?

Its more a society thing than anything, you just dont learn these things unless you hang out around someone or someplace that teaches you to do it. You should be learning this in school but thats a loldifferent story, our politicians are too busy petitioning prostitutes to worry about education.

[miokomioko]

"cyber bullying" is a far more important issue

[Tempyst]

Too bad that these are the same reporters that two years ago were saying that RMT were a great cottage industry, and they were just hard working people trying to carve out a niche in the new digital age.

It all smacks of hypocrisy to me.

They were talking about second life iirc, where rmt is both legal and encouraged.

I am talking about video game reporters in general when they were reporting on RMT in MMO's in general.

Because every writer for every magazine agrees 100% on every issue and are in fact all clones of Jango Fett, right?

Seriously, are you retarded? Do you know what "in general" means?

So what you're saying is, both of your original posts were meaningless and didn't actually say anything

good job champ

If I said in general gamers are closet racists because of what they post on message boards and I called you a hypocrite for having a black friend you'd probably think that was stupid right

[LinktheDeme]

How and what do you RMT on second life? I've never played it

[ShuttleXpC]

So someone made it public on how stupid they really are. Although SE has been doing kinda good.

Oh hi there, let me fix that.

Who in their right mind would play the game again after being hacked an not reformatting hard drives?

[Lexa]

I always like to see the issue of mass hackings getting more attention, and I thought this was well written. It didn't make online gamers sound like lazy addicts with zero lives, IMO anyway.

I do agree that SE has changed a lot in the past year. A friend of mine got hacked last summer (her own fault, really - she got one of those "gilseller secrets!" /tells and stupidly visited the link) and SE refused to do anything. Another friend of mine has been fighting with them for even longer than that to get his taru back, but is still getting no, because it's been so long. Almost everyone I know (that may sound like I know a ton of people who got hacked, but honestly I don't, heh) who got hacked recently, though, got their accounts frozen almost right away. One guy is still waiting to get his account rolled back.

[Chreman]

Gotta realize some people do this as a hobby and are really only interested in the gaming experience, not the backround technological aspect.

Otherwise very well-written article.

[kayn]

So someone made it public on how stupid they really are. Although SE has been doing kinda good.

Oh hi there, let me fix that.

Who in their right mind would play the game again after being hacked an not reformatting hard drives?

The same people who spill McDonald's hot coffee on themselves then sue McDonald's and win?

[miokomioko]

So someone made it public on how stupid they really are. Although SE has been doing kinda good.

Oh hi there, let me fix that.

Who in their right mind would play the game again after being hacked an not reformatting hard drives?

The same people who spill McDonald's hot coffee on themselves then sue McDonald's and win?

Goddamnit, people. Read up about that case before you throw that comment around.

[Vauce]

Really well done article on this subject, glad to see its finally getting a little more press in the gaming world. I don't have much exposure to other MMOs, but I wonder how difficult other companies are to deal with in these kinds of situations. What's Blizzard's policy for hijacked account recovery? Maybe SE could learn a thing or two, like making the incredibly-important-to-account-recovery information juuuuust a little harder to change. Even an email confirming a change in password/account info would be better than, say, NOTHING.

Slightly off topic, but an LS mate posted the following a couple days ago. Take it for what its worth (micro$oft, yadda yadda), but password-stealing malware targeting gamers is getting more attention from some higher places.

Microsoft’s June 10 update of its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) was updated to detect and remove game password-stealing malware. The results are pretty amazing - more than 2 million PCs disinfected in the first week (out of some 330 million downloads of the MSRT).

As you all probably know by now, this month in MSRT was a very significant release for Gamers everywhere with the addition of a variety of password stealers directly targeting Online games. The main targets are mostly based in Eastern Asia (Lineage Online, Legend Of Mir, ZT Online just to name a few), but World of Warcraft and Valve’s Steam client are high on the hit-list too – you didn’t escape that easily.

The main offender in this motley crew of badness is Win32/Taterf. Taterf has been running hot the last few months, constituting over 80% of the April and May Wildlists. The worm itself is actually a mutation of Win32/Frethog, being based off the same source code. Frethog is just a drop in the ocean of malware we’re seeing coming out of China nowadays, many of which are targeting online games.

…

Onto the numbers! After its first day in MSRT, Taterf components had been removed from over 700,000 machines! For comparison, Win32/Nuwar (aka ‘Storm worm’) was removed from less than half that in its first month. These are ridiculous numbers of infections my friends, absolutely mind-boggling; many, many whelps. Frethog had proved to be as prevalent as we expected too, with detections on over 200,000 distinct machines.

Those are some staggering numbers, and show just how far and wide this kind of malware has spread.

The MSRT is a tool that I’d like to see Microsoft roll out more widely. I know that it is in Microsoft’s interests to carry out Windows Genuine Advantage checks for some downloads to make sure they are not going to pirates, but I think that a periodic scan with the MSRT would be far more beneficial to the wider computing community.

There are a lot of people out there who don’t have the first clue about how to keep their PCs safe, and only some of these people are going to be regularly downloading patches, so it would be good for Microsoft to come up with ways that exposes a greater number of systems to the MSRT.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2122

[ShuttleXpC]

So someone made it public on how stupid they really are. Although SE has been doing kinda good.

Oh hi there, let me fix that.

Who in their right mind would play the game again after being hacked an not reformatting hard drives?

The same people who spill McDonald's hot coffee on themselves then sue McDonald's and win?

Goddamnit, people. Read up about that case before you throw that comment around.

I read the entire article, and while I do blame SE for about 40% of the problem, the rest I blame on this person. Who would actually try to play this game again after being hacked without reformatting your hard drives? In fact I would even go as far as to start playing on the 360 after such a horrible experience.

Yet, this person took their PC to some Best Buy sort of piece of shit store, that says they fixed her PC and then wonders why she was hacked again. Here is a quick and amazing tip to anyone wanting PC help, first and foremost NEVER EVER take your PC to a store to have them clean viruses/malware/spyware off it. Mainly due to the fact they use bullshit programs like Norton (which Best Buy promotes and I'm sure they get some sort of money deal by pushing this piece of crap in their store). So, you get ripped off from the Best Buy guys as they smirk at your ass after having waved the magic wand of Norton on your PC, which is basically like wiping your ass with poison ivy then wondering why it itches later.

Yes, laws do need to be created that protect people's personal information in online games, and if she was to have contacted the lawyer as an identity theft victim and not a person trying to get a virtual game account back, she could have succeeded in suing the ****er who took her stuff. SE will supply on request from a Law enforcement official IP's and log data of people who connected to the account, they in turn give that info to the law enforcement official which you can VIEW and are legally allowed to have if you request and show proof the account in question is in fact yours. You then use the IP's call the ISP up and request by lawyer who was under that IP on the dates specified. The ISP which is also required by law to provide information pertaining to legal cases would then tell you. It can then go two places from here, if the guy is in your country you have a case, if he is from China, Brazil, Sweden or BFE. You CANNOT do jack, but at least you went this far and tried.

The problem with these people getting laughed at by law enforcement officials is they contact these people saying, "liek omg my account got the stole" Lawyer/law enforcement, "Who gives a fuck?". If they were to contact law enforcement and say, this person stole my account, used my account to make false charges, changed account info and impersonated me to do all this, they wouldn't be laughing at the person and may actually try to do more then just say hold please while they laugh at your ass to whoever is near them when the call takes place.

[Apelila]

The kicker: Once Michelle's account was restored and attached to her credit card, Square Enix hit her for fees associated with the hacker's invalid credit card number.

What.The.Shit. Man I would make someone's life hell over this, I don't care if they're a just a CSR someone at SE would be listening to me bitch until they hungup and then I would just keep calling until they reversed it.

I get the feeling that somethings wrong with this because if your CC expires they just disable the account until you replace it and on the next month double bill you; Though I think if I was in this lady's position I'd honestly just cancel my account.

Also at the person above me, people + computer = colossal stupid. If you take your car to a car repair place, do you expect it to break from the same damn thing a week later? People use the same logic for computers as everything else, IE: a place that specializes in them will fix it, they know what they're doing.

[Tsukasaz]

How someone can get 22 viruses is beyond me

Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire... other shitty P2P software that followed original Napster - pretty sure those fucked over their share of systems.

Kazaa/Limewire got me so many viruses and shit, I ruined 2 pcs. Oh the old days of downloading porn as a child. <_________________<

Are they really that bad? I still use limewire (just for music) and I haven't noticed anything <_< (although I'm horrible with computers). I usually just sign in once or twice a month download a few songs and get the hell out of there though.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Really well done article on this subject

"I explained to [him], if someone stole Yahoo people would have the suits flying."

Good articlol

[Gere]

Really well done article on this subject

"I explained to [him], if someone stole Yahoo people would have the suits flying."

Good articlol

You made pretty much the same post on the last page.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Really well done article on this subject

"I explained to [him], if someone stole Yahoo people would have the suits flying."

Good articlol

You made pretty much the same post on the last page.

Absolutely, but saying it's a well done article just makes this even crazier. It needed to be referred to again.

[Melchiah]

If you take your car to a car repair place, do you expect it to break from the same damn thing a week later? People use the same logic for computers as everything else, IE: a place that specializes in them will fix it, they know what they're doing.

I turned a wrench for a living at Bridgestone/Firestone for 5 years. I am an ASE certified tech. The answer to this question unfortunately, is yes, depending on what the car was taken in for. There are all different levels of mechanics working in any given shop, and shop management is never, in my experience, very competent on who they give what work to. You don't want an oil change boy doing your diagnostics or your alignments, but many times it happens anyway for no other reason than the skilled techs are busy and the oil change boy is not. I don't know how computer shops work, but I'm sure the analogy is valid.

In short, if you want it done right...