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back to article WoW players learn value of Windows updates

Subscribers playing World of Warcraft on Windows machines continue to find their accounts stolen more than eleven months after hackers first began targeting them using a Trojan attack, according to posts on the game's official website. The perpetrators are employing sophisticated techniques that involve hundreds of booby- …

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  1. Joe Montana

    What good will a scanner be?

    The scanner will only pick up known malware...

    Antivirus packages already detect known malware, and known malware gets patched.

    All this scanner will do, is give people a false sense of security as they're being attacked by new, unknown malware. If it's as profitable as it seems to sell stolen accounts, there will be plenty of people churning out new malware all the time.

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  2. Gordon Fecyk

    Only "some" used the ANI vulnerability?

    Or did "most" use simple fraud to dupe WoW users out of their virtual booty?

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  3. Gavin

    Thick bastards

    Come on I mean appart from the odd legitimate sites that have been hacked which must have caught about 3 people. The real reason they get havked isn't trogan, spyware or hackers. The real reason is stupid users that don't know how to use a computer let alone protect it.

    I use M$ Windows XP SP1 Semi patched for performance no Antivirus, no anti spyware and no firewall program I am however behind a linux firewall, just blocking ports. I have never had a virus, only the common spyware that comes with windows and tracking cookies and never had my WoW account hacked. WHY i'll tell you

    I dont download illegal music from bareshare or limewire i use reviewed Bittorrent sites and binary newsgroups.

    I dont open every last peice of crap i get on e-mail only stuff im expecting

    I dont surf porn in internet explorer actually i dont use internet explorer i use firefox full stop if a website wont work in forefox it isnt worth looking at. Firefox handles my porn viewing and ever ANI exploiting sites.

    These people really should not get there items back at all and call it a good hard lesson of use your brain and learn

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  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Silently installs trojans ?

    "...hacked websites that ... silently install keyloggers"

    By "silently" I suppose Mr. Goodin is referring to the wonderful IE functionality that allows a web site to "force" a download without user consent.

    I discovered that "functionality" by chance because I was surfing with Mozilla at the time and a popup displayed telling me that the site was trying to force a download and did I want it ? Of course, I said no, then it occurred to me to ask myself what IE would have done in such a case. So I did a bit of research on that site and the file it wanted to download.

    After having determined that the file was not dangerous enough to worry about if I deleted it straight away (it targeted Outlook, which I do not use), I went for the gold and started IE, typed in the same URL and waited. No warning, no popup and no download window either, but sure enough, when I checked the file was right where it was supposed to be.

    Shame on Microsoft for inventing such a fundamentally flawed "functionality", and kudos to just about every other web browser I have ever tried for not allowing such nonsense to continue unchecked.

    Visibly, WoW users use IE. It's called a bad practice, and you pay for it sooner or later.

    Pascal.

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  5. Ash

    Keeping WoW (and other) Credentials Safe

    To any WoW player who reads El Reg (Not that anybody who knows about this site won't know this anyway...);

    1. Create a Limited (user) account on your PC for each person you want to use it. If you don't know how, search Microsoft.com

    2. Do not use any account but a user account to play games, visit websites, check email, watch movies etc.

    3. ONLY use the non-limited (Administrator) account to perform updates. WoW updates will load when required, Windows Updates should be set to Notify Before Download or Notify Before Install

    I'm willing to bet this ANI vulnerability requires you to be logged on as Admin...

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  6. Martin Owens

    Proc Run?

    Ash, even if you were running linux and are foolish enough to run something in your home directory it'd have a chance at hacking into WoW; the fact is that WoW uses normal widgets which don't encode passwords as their typed and they don't use protected process inputs to stop key logging (although I have no idea if windows api in general offers this feature).

    the point is that Blizzard are doing the bare minimum to secure their users through technical means, and it's not helped by the rather lax security offered by the standard windows xp operating system.

    I'm playing ATITD on Linux, so there.

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