I just wanted to tell you all how very sorry I am about the guild vault.

My primary account was hacked last night and I only found out tonight the extent of the damage. I honestly didn't realize they could use my mods to hack the account. I've shut off all my mods and plan on deleting them altogether. I've changed my password and have everything linked to battlenet now. They had me blocked out by linking my main account to their own battlenet account. Obviously they sold everything and deleted Thundarin and Arielandra. I've filed a ticket.

I would appreciate any advice on how to keep this from happening in the future and I intend to play without addons until I better understand what happened. At the moment I'm still shocked and very sorry that all of your hard work in rebuilding the guild vault has been wasted.

You're a great group of people and don't deserve to have this continually happening to you.

Get an authenticator.

http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000622

Six bucks. Use whatever addons or mods you like and sleep in peace.

Please tell them to restore the guild vault that was raped. They have done it in the past *fingers crossed* that they will do it again.

I've just purchased an authenticator and have asked Blizzard to try to replace the guild bank items that were taken.

We still love you. So don't worry about that. The chinese are some crafty, mean fuckers.

Don't feel too bad Thundarin. This could have happened (and has in the past) to almost anyone.

You most likely have a keylogger that could have come from any number of sources. Even from ads on "safe" websites. From what I have read accounts that are secured with a $6 authenticator have never been hacked. You can practice safe surfing as much as you want but you will never secure from hacking until you get an authenticator.

Homreker, could you please advise Thundarin on the steps you took to get the stolen items back?

Using addons is fine...but automatic updaters like Curse and WoWMatrix can be spoofed into downloading infected ones. I think that's what happened to Hom if I remember correctly...whose line of work is keeping people safe on the web...so don't feel bad. Look in your addons for any .exe files and delete them...WoW works on .lua.

Apologies are not needed on the forums...just send every VSer a cake or pie, whatever their preference is, and all will be forgiven.

I think that's what happened to Hom if I remember correctly...whose line of work is keeping people safe on the web...so don't feel bad.

Every time Hom used my classrooms, he broke my PC's with his damn resource hog presentations. One time he even managed to blow up an amplifier.

Homreker, could you please advise Thundarin on the steps you took to get the stolen items back?

Sorry, I just saw this.

You did the right thing opening the ticket. There will be a bit of a wait while they restore everything, they actually temporarily banned my account when I got hacked because the person was using it to send gold to other accounts.

They did restore all of the guild vault items by sending them back to me in the mail. So when they do restore everything you'll get about 400 system mail messages with items both from your person and from the guild vault. (I think I even got some bonus items that the hacker had bought/sold from the AH but those went into our guild vault as well).

If you can't get satisfaction within a few days, you can call Bliz at this number: 1-949-955-1382.

As the ticket was already in at the time, the person on the other end could only tell me that it was being processed. This didn't actually speed things up, but it made me feel better.

Be patient, and keep an eye out for any emails the send you. I had to clarify a couple of things in emails when I went through the processes, but overall, Blizz did the right thing.


As for making sure it never happens again, like Fox said, get an authenticator. Its 6.50 and will give you peace of mind forever...

One time he even managed to blow up an amplifier.

Any equipment that I caused to explode had it coming.

I got an email from Blizzard a little while ago telling me they are returning the stuff as well as my two deleted characters. It was 12 full pages of items in small font so it will take me a while to sort it out but I will be getting everything back to the guild bank as soon as possible starting tonight.

I also ordered the authenticator and deleted all my mods until I get it.

That's great news!

I suggest you never use mods. Perhaps it isn't possible, but I'm afraid an authenticator won't prevent hackers from getting personal info not related to WOW. Especially worrisome if you leave WOW up and running and ALT-TAB to other things, like on-line bank pages, etc.

I know I do from time to time.

A mod cannot access anything outside of WoW. Blizzard specifically sandboxes the lua code that mods run so that they can't interact with anything outside the game. A mod cannot read your hard drive except to access the files that Blizzard's sandbox says it can. It can't interact with any program outside the game. It cannot read your password, steal your bank details or get you pregnant. It can do all sorts of things to the game itself, but that's it.

If you want to be safer installing mods, the only program you should ever run to install them is whatever you use to read .zip files. Recent versions of Windows and MacOS have .zip readers built in. Extract the files from the .zip, copy the whole directory structure to the Addons folder and you're done. If a mod ever comes distributed in something other than a .zip file, if it ever asks you to run any program other than your .zip reader, BE SUSPICIOUS. If your browser pops up some odd dialog before you download or install the mod through your .zip program, BE SUSPICIOUS. People get hacked not by the mods themselves but by clicking through to malicious sites which exploit security holes in their browsers, or by being convinced to run programs as part of the mod install process which are actually installing trojans / keyloggers / whatever in addition to the mod.

Downloading no mods whatsoever will not make you immune to getting hacked - you still can if you end up visiting a site with exploit code on it. Plus, you miss out on all the cool things mods can do.

A mod cannot access anything outside of WoW. Blizzard specifically sandboxes the lua code that mods run so that they can't interact with anything outside the game. A mod cannot read your hard drive except to access the files that Blizzard's sandbox says it can. It can't interact with any program outside the game. It cannot read your password, steal your bank details or get you pregnant. It can do all sorts of things to the game itself, but that's it.

If you want to be safer installing mods, the only program you should ever run to install them is whatever you use to read .zip files. Recent versions of Windows and MacOS have .zip readers built in. Extract the files from the .zip, copy the whole directory structure to the Addons folder and you're done. If a mod ever comes distributed in something other than a .zip file, if it ever asks you to run any program other than your .zip reader, BE SUSPICIOUS. If your browser pops up some odd dialog before you download or install the mod through your .zip program, BE SUSPICIOUS. People get hacked not by the mods themselves but by clicking through to malicious sites which exploit security holes in their browsers, or by being convinced to run programs as part of the mod install process which are actually installing trojans / keyloggers / whatever in addition to the mod.

Downloading no mods whatsoever will not make you immune to getting hacked - you still can if you end up visiting a site with exploit code on it. Plus, you miss out on all the cool things mods can do.


Amen!
Except for one thing, I thought the mods were how O got pregnant...