Hi all,

I'm new in these here parts.

I have just formed a guild and am developing that, but I was just curious to know everyone's 'take' on the recent spate of account thefts that have been going on.

I keep hearing that it's due to addons etc but really it's impossible to run a guild 'well' without addons in my opinion if you're going to have a web site with it.

My partner got his account hacked and all his 60's stripped to the bone, so we both removed all our addons and everything else that we thought might put us at risk and locked down our computers tighter than a gnats bum.

I'm just peeking back over the fence now and reinstalling addons with a view to eventually having a fully-functional web site with guild info and dkp on it.

Just curious to know everyone elses view on this. Thoughts?

The addons themselves cannot cause problems. They might be lua files, but blizzard have limited the lua implementation. So i seriously boubt that anything can be pilfered using mods alone.

The issue comes in with mods that install via an exe. THAT i would consider a serious threat and if a mod is not offered without having to use the EXE it will not be installed on my machine.

The other place is of course websites, and worldorwar.net seems to get targetted a lot. If your dont have a script blocker of some sort running on youre machine youre bound to get infected.

Some ads on various WoW websites have been known in the past to contain key loggers specifically targeted for WoW. The best prevention is to run script blockers & ad blockers when surfing these sites. It's not the sites fault since they usually use a third party company to link ads from. Then there are those sites that are just malicious. The down side is those websites depend on the ads to generate revenue to pay for the upkeep for the site.

Nothing is 100%, but just keep your operating system up to date, use a browser other than Internet Explorer (IE7 is a lot safer than IE6 though), and use blocking software to prevent scripts being run locally.

Images on websites (eg. screenshots) are a source of trojans, due to weaknesses in IE. Windows Media files can also carry them.

Not using IE6 is good, but beware that some applications use IE under the hood to display HTML, so you should still make sure IE is up to date (ie. IE7) and fully patched. Win2k users must be especially careful, since IE7 is not available for that platform.

Interesting and valid points all, thanks. I think we know that the keylogger somehow came from a malicious website/image/banner on one of these web sites, but it's useful to see what other people think.

bbj911 wrote:The issue comes in with mods that install via an exe. THAT i would consider a serious threat and if a mod is not offered without having to use the EXE it will not be installed on my machine.

So are we talking things like uploaders etc? Actually since BC I'm even considering the need for things like dkp uploaders/guild bank item uploads, since groups sizes are so small now it means my new guilds probably going to be teeny, it's all probably pointless now to have such facilities.... depends on new end-game content I suppose. We'll see.

these uploaders are normally opensource, meaning you can get hold of the sourcecode and compile it yourself after youve given a once-over. If youre paranoid, then that would be the way to go.

Good thread. Just want to say my guild has been hit with 3 hacks in the past 1.5 months. Blizzard got around to finally "resolving" to the first person to be hacked and even though he had a complete list of gear (thanks to the WoW Roster) Blizzard said they could not restore his account and game him 4 14 slot bags and many low level greens. Also to add insult to his injury they gave him a Green Wand and 2h Axe -- he plays a druid.

this is my point of view of a commonly used EXE (UniUploader):


If you must use an executable binary make sure it was compiled by someone you trust.

What this means is:

In order to ensure your own security, you MUST review or have a trusted one review the operations that the executable binary does on your computer.

UniUploader is a trusted executable, that is People can trust ME to compile the executable for them. This attribute of UniUploader has been vital in its survival over the last few years.

a Green Wand and 2h Axe -- he plays a druid.

I believe the saying is "whooshahhhh"

ds001 wrote:Good thread. Just want to say my guild has been hit with 3 hacks in the past 1.5 months. Blizzard got around to finally "resolving" to the first person to be hacked and even though he had a complete list of gear (thanks to the WoW Roster) Blizzard said they could not restore his account and game him 4 14 slot bags and many low level greens. Also to add insult to his injury they gave him a Green Wand and 2h Axe -- he plays a druid.

Yeah my bf got exactly the same response (and an axe too!). He has 3 60's and they sent several crap greens to ONE of them, saying 'we're unable to verify your losses, so here's some gear' and they wouldn't let him raise another ticket on the issue. thankfully with TBC it's all kind-of behind him, since feral druids are getting some luvin on gear, finally. He still feels bent over by blizz though, and is, of course, paranoid about security.

I was discussing with him whether TBC would end the gold-buying-market (and hence hacked accounts) now, since it has fundamentally changed the in-game economy: its not so much of a struggle for players to get 'good' gear and monetary rewards for everything seem exemplary; people just won't feel the need to buy gold anymore, unless they are extraordinarily lacking a life..

I'd assume that when they send crap greens they think it's your fault but they know it's near impossible to get new gear while naked.

Indeed! Aren't they thoughtful. Actually the guild we were in clubbed together and got him some twilight cultist gear just so his gnome wasn't butt naked. However, twilight cultist gear doesn't bode all that well grinding BWL. Doesn't @#$% bode well anywhere lol

Ya, to reiterate, WoW addons cannot even get your account name, much less password.

The executable you download, you should ALWAYS look at the source. Take UniUploader for example.

There are hundreds of people, if not thousands using it. If it were trojaned in any way, you'd know by now. And that's the buty of open source.