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Anniandre

<Knights of Honor>
Hyjal

Hacked! | Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 12:04 PM

Hey everyone,

Just to let everyone know, my account was hacked on November 28. I wanted to put this post together to do a few things:

1)      To let you all know what happened

2)      Let you know where I am right now

3)      Thank those guildies that helped, and

4)      Put together a little guide to help anyone else this happens to.

First off, I was hacked. How? I am not entirely sure. My current belief is that I hit a keylogger or had spyware on my work computer. I often use this computer to check the WoW website to see the guild calendar; I think this is how my password was compromised. I believe that this happened when our external firewall was taken off line; the person responsible was thoroughly punished

The hacker logged into my account and started popping through my toons quickly. I would think he was quickly vendoring anything that he could. This criminal sold everything: my equipment, my materials, my potions, and supplies. After my stuff was sold and my bags cleared, this criminal turned his attention to the guild bank. I have not seen the aftermath but I hear almost everything was taken. All of this stuff was then vendored at various locations around Azeroth. Finally, as a final insult, all of my bags were vendored. I later found out that the money was distributed to a bunch of other players while in an instance, the rest was sent to a character whose name was a long random string of letters (most likely a gold selling service or transfer mule).

As this was happening, a few observant Knights (woot for Boomer and Myst) noticed unusual activity from my toons. My characters were logging on and off rapidly (at a time that I am rarely on), they were unresponsive to whispers and guild chat, and they were seen in weird places. An officer was notified immediately, luckily this person MIA’d all of my toons to stop the bleeding. I was notified through the guild website mail that something was going on with my toon; thank you for doing this! It would have been a heck of a shock to not be able to log on and try to figure out what is wrong after work (yeah, it’s really slow at work these days and I get to do WoW stuff as time permits).

I don’t want anyone to worry about me. I have had numerous gold loan/gift offers from the guild to ensure I could continue playing the game we all love without interruption. Thank you to everyone that offered aid, I will remember your generosity. I want to let you all know how lucky I was with a couple of things:

1)      Anni’s current gear was not vendored, nor were her bags. I am not sure if this is because the quick action of the officers spooked the would-be thief, but that is my belief. Regardless, Anni was able to finish levelling and continue with minor impact.

2)      The thief missed my bank alt. As some of you know, I have a bank alt with her own guild bank. I keep all of my bulk mats and a lot of gold there; I think that the thief assumed a level 30 wouldn’t be sitting on that kind of a nest egg.

Last night (two days after I was hacked) I received a partial gear restore:
-Anni got her bank contents back less any crafting mats
-Altaraa and Kulvan got their gear back, they also got all of their bank contents less crafting mats
-Aveliani is still sitting naked and broke in Shattrath, this toon was the one with which most of the damage was done
-I am still missing all of my gold/spending cash...that's 6,000g that the GMs are looking for

1/2 of Anni's stuff (no herbs returned)...1 down and 3 to go!

Edited by Anniandre at December 1st, 2008 - 11:35 am

_____________________________

I'm not late, I'm contemplating new and creative raid strategies - Anni
WoW Armory IMBA Score

Anniandre

<Knights of Honor>
Hyjal

Re: Hacked! | Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 12:36 PM

Just a couple of notes to prevent this from happening to KoH or anyone you care about again:
1)    Watch out for your guild mates and report any funny behaviour to an officer as soon as you can.
2)    Watch out for new addons and/or websites you visit. Keep your protection software up to date. Use an external router or dedicated firewall where possible.
3)    If you have the means, a bank alt is not a bad idea. It could be an alt that you no longer play or just a new level 1 toon. Keep nothing on this toon or in its bank, but having it’s own guild bank could save some of your stuff (or at least a small stash of gold).
4) But a blizzard authenticator (like I did the day I was hacked). It's only $6 (plus S&H +/- $10)...it saves a lot of grief

The Recovery Process

If you’ve been hacked, get your account back as soon as possible. From the Blizzard website, there are several methods listed to recover your account. For me, the best method was calling the 1-800 number provided, customer service will immediately boot the person on your account and change your password.
As soon as you get your account back, change your password from a clean computer. For me, this was my home system which I know is secure. Please, do yourself a favour and ensure that the system is clean (or a Mac).

Once you have your account back and you have a ticket in with a GM, this process can begin.

Step 1: Initial GM contact
A GM will contact you to talk about what happened. For me, this step took a long time due to the number of open tickets with respect to Wrath of the Lich king (apparently customer service and GMs have been REALLY busy since its release).
The GM will ask you questions regarding the incident. They will ask you to pinpoint specific items that went missing to help them narrow the search. I was able to list some of the last items that I vendored to give them a starting point.
Get an account from your guild mates or friends if possible. I was informed of three specific people that were grouped with my warrior, it turned out that each of these people had received a significant amount of my gold and items to sell (oops, the GMs let that slip to me).

The GM will just be on a fact finding mission, they won't really be able to help you.

Step 2:
Partial Restore, this is where I am at now
You will again be contacted by a GM. After talking with you for a bit, they will release what they can to you through the in-game mail.
You will not get back crafting mats, gold, or anything that was DEd.

The GM will close your ticket and pass the issue onto a specialist for further investigation.

Step 3:
An investigation team will step in an begin going over your vendor record line by line to restore anything that is still missing. They will also be the ones responsible for returning your gold (after they calculate that is rightfully yours and not a proceed from vendoring your stuff).
This team also tracks down those responsible; howver this is not something that they will be at liberty to discuss with you.

This group works entirely by email, so ensure that your spam filters are set to allow messages from Blizzard.

Having this happen to you is, more than anything, an annoying time. I spent a lot of time waiting on and responding to GMs, this cut into my play time. In addition to this, I have been unable to use any of my alts, continue working on tradeskills, etc; in short it really messed up my routine.

Edited by Anniandre at December 1st, 2008 - 11:41 am

_____________________________

I'm not late, I'm contemplating new and creative raid strategies - Anni
WoW Armory IMBA Score

Anniandre

<Knights of Honor>
Hyjal

Re: Hacked! | Sunday, November 30, 2008 - 12:37 PM

Reserved for followup

_____________________________

I'm not late, I'm contemplating new and creative raid strategies - Anni
WoW Armory IMBA Score

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