Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe

Lum’s been googling for World of Warcraft hacks again. From Gamespot, the down and dirty:

The World of Warcraft guild Overrated has been permanently banned by Blizzard Entertainment after it was caught cheating in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Guild members used an exploit that essentially knocked down walls, according to postings on World of Warcraft-related forums.

i.e. used an exploit that took advantage of client-side movement.

Well fucking duh. EVERYBODY, including my teenaged gaming neighbor Skippy, knows that WoW has too much in the client.

This is also a good reminder of a life lesson most of us learned in grade school: Two people cannot keep a secret.

And its corollary: There’s no way in Hell an entire guild can keep a secret.

The August 2006 Warcraft Keylogger Incident

The official word from the Warcraft forums about The August 2006 Keylogger: “We would like to warn players of a keylogger scam that is getting posted on the forums. This scam puts fake URLs, or hyperlinks, that once clicked will install a trojan to steal your account name and password. It is important that players take caution when being directed to outside websites and update their security on their computers accordingly. […]” Reply #37, by Landragoran of the Draenor realm, summarized the real details (this is what I heard/read also): “just for everyone who doesn’t know, the site currently being used for distribution of this keylogger is tulang1.com (i’m not going to type out the whole link in fear of someone clicking it and blaming me). basically if you see any link with “tulang” in it, do not click the link. so far i have seen the link in a post claiming that DnT had downed the 4 horsemen, SS’s inside, and 2 posts with the title “‘Trial Version’ question”, wherein someone claims they purchased a computer that came with a trial version of WoW and they want to know if installing it will install the full version but only allow them to play for a short amount of time, or only install part of the game. they then provide a link to the “trial version” that they are talking about.” (Furl archive of thread, page 1oh well, Furl’s dead now, but whatcanyado.)

Important Gaming Lesson: Brothers are Evil

If we learn anything from gaming, it is this: Brothers are the shittiest humans in the world. It’s always brothers that are hacking, hijacking, botting, cheating and generally abusing game characters any chance they get. I’m considering adding the question “Do you have a brother?” to our guild application and I’ll just auto-deny anyone with a male sibling. I have an older brother myself, true, but I keep a sharp eye on him whenever technology is involved. Anyways, it appears that brothers are at it again, deleting Warcraft characters across the realms. Either brothers or a trojan keylogger — my research is incomplete at this point. There’s a few reports this is related to a poser CTmod site and/or a Best Warcraft Video Ever site, players are warned to download mods only from trusted sites and only .zip files rather than executables, bla bla, you know the drill. I’ll update this post with a few links when the forums wake up again. (Maintenance day, donchaknow.) The smart money is on goddamn brothers, however. UPDATE: Here’s the Customer Service forum thread seeking additional details from affected account owners.