Today, I'd like to point out a legitimate hack. Skimming through my top secret warlock email, (yeah, we all get those) I received a notification that my Blizz account info has been changed. Nefarious deeds definitely at work here. I bet it was those Mages; mad that we got sparkly soul harvest.
hello!
This is an automated notification regarding your Battle.net account. Some or all of your contact information was recently modified through the Account Management website. If you made recent account changes, please disregard this automatic notification.
If you did NOT make any changes to your account, we recommend you log in to Account Management review your account settings.Log in link below, fill in your account information and other relevant information.
http://us.battle(dot)account-riso(dot)net/blah/blah/blah
If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, or if unauthorized changes continue to happen, please contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for further assistance. (snip)
Let's investigate. How about the hover-over? Being a little curious at this time, I hover-over some of the links that are embedded in the site. When I put my mouse over the link for "Forgot Password", I am presented with a URL that matches my International side, but considering I am accessing the site from California, most wouldn't consider it exotic. I went to a "US.Battle" website, but I am redirected to an EU.battle.net resource for changing my password. Definitely fishy.
As a final straw, I open the site using the URL that I know and love. http://us.battle.net Once there, I see one more thing; the hacker did a really good job, but they missed the favicon. The site is using a blank page icon, where the official site has used the battle.net logo.

It's not news. Google claims to "Don't Be Evil", but still manages to get into a lot of trouble. Warlocks everywhere, protect yourself from those more practiced in shadow magic than yourself. You can ninja-loot from those mages and priests in-game, just don't let them return the favor outside the game.
Armory Glitch today granted me a title for a profession I don't have. |
But... but... why would you follow the links in those emails in the first place? It's obvious they're fakes.
ReplyDeleteAs an email administrator by trade, I've seen a variant of everything. There is a reason these types of emails (and the hundreds of spam we get each day) are even sent, because they work on someone, sometime. It's more financially viable to send the spam/hack, than to not.
ReplyDeleteSpammers and hackers play the numbers game; sending out millions of these email messages. For them a 1% success rate, is still 1,000s of people's account information. Hopefully a majority of these people have authenticators, but then again Blizzard's not putting them in every box of the game, so you know it's not 100% coverage.