Guild Ranks To Include Authenticators

Image courtesy of WoW Insider

The latest news from the Cataclysm beta program, via WoW Insider, is that guild masters have the option tp set guild ranks to require the player to have an authenticator on their account.

The obvious use for this is to have the guild master set this on any guild rank that has guild bank access. This will help reduce the chance of the guild bank being stripped in the event of an account compromise.

However, guild masters can go further by mandating that all of their raiders, and even all of their members, have an authenticator.  Too often we see raiding disrupted when key players have had their accounts hacked.  Just imagine the inconvenience when a progression raid gets cancelled because the main tank is waiting for his/her account to be restored after a hack.

This is a great initiative by Blizzard and will surely give people one less excuse for players to adopt this technology.

Some of the more common excuses for people not having an authenticator include:

1. "I don't have a credit card" or "They don't deliver to my country" - download the free authenticator app for your mobile phone or ask a guild mate to purchase one for you and mail it to you
2. "I am too smart/cautious to get hacked" or "I have never been hacked" - Vulnerabilities in your operating system and applications can very easily result in you downloading a keylogger by simply visiting a legitimate web site that may have been compromised.  For well-written exploits, no user interaction is required to become infected - you just need to visit a compromised web site.  Your game login and password is then shipped off to the bad guys.  See the recent Adobe example. Additionally, common passwords can be attacked by automated processes - you don't even need a keylogger on your system to fall victim.
3. "I own a Mac" - Yes, you are less likely to pick up a keylogger since most are written for Windows however, owning a Mac won't stop you falling for phishing attacks.
4. "I pay for this service, authenticators should be free" - I doubt that Blizzard are making any real revenue on a product that sells for $6.50 - they are just aiming to recover costs.  Think of the amount of money you have paid for your subscription to date, and then ask yourself if it is worth the extra $6.50 to reduce the chance of all your hard work being compromised.
5. "It is inconvenient to type in the code" - the extra ten seconds required to login is a small price to pay for the extra security that it provides.
6. "Authenticators have been hacked" - well, it was not the authenticator that was hacked, it was more that a keylogger picked up the authenticator code and, in real time, shipped it off to the bad guys.  This was a fairly sophisticated attack and required people power to do the real time processing.  Keep in mind that security is never 100% and that the authenticator is just making it more difficult for the bad guys to get into your account.  An authenticator is still a very effective tool in your security arsenal.
7. "I don't care, Blizzard can restore my account after a few days" - if you are in a raiding guild then the delay in reporting and restoring your account may mean you miss out on raiding, potentially impacting your entire raid group.  This may even put your guild membership at risk if this happens regularly.

Check out Ten Easy Steps to Securing WoW for more security tips.

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Adobe Announces New Flash Vulnerability

Adobe Systems has recently disclosed a vulnerability in their Flash Player 10.1.82.76 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris. The vulnerability allows the execution of code from a specially crafted PDF or Flash file. Adobe mention that they have seen this being actively exploited.

Put simply, this type of vulnerability could see you become infected with a keylogger simply by browsing a web site that has been compromised. We have seen WoW keyloggers installed via this type of Adobe vulnerability before in June and February.

Adobe has not released a patch for this as yet, but plan to have something available during the week of September 27.

You can reduce the chance of becoming subject to this attack by patching your flash player as soon as a patch is released and by running a PDF/flash blocker such as noscript in the meantime.

You can find more information on this at the Adobe Security Advisory site.

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Blizzard steps up password education

Blizzard has stepped up its security education program, with a big emphasis on password security. Via both a game login message and a recent blue post, Blizzard stresses the importance of having a different password for your World Of Warcraft game account and making sure that your password is a strong one.

BORNAKK: We have been helping players deal with account theft for years now, and unfortunately, roughly a third of players make a very basic security mistake: using the same password for all of their security needs.

If you are serious about protecting your account and your personal security, your Battle.net password should be different from your email account password -- or other personal passwords for that matter!

No one wants account thieves rooting around in their personal email, address book, and contact lists. Too often we see thieves breaking in to this information because their target has used the same password across multiple types of accounts. Not only can this give thieves access to your account, it can lead to compromises far outside of Battle.net as well.

It’s immensely important that everyone use separate passwords for separate applications, including games. Secure passwords have both numeric and alphabetical values, and are usually at least 10 characters in length. 

Now this is very sound advice and is something that I have been highlighting for quite some time.  One third of hacks being a result of using the same password across multiple sites and applications, such as email and fan sites, is a fairly alarming statistic.  This suggests that there are a lot of 3rd party systems out there that are being hacked to farm WoW user accounts and passwords.

Also note that WoW does not impose restrictions on password attempts so dictionary attacks are also a real possibility on your account.  This is a great reason for selecting a strong, complex password.

Oddly enough, Bornakk does not mention the use of an authenticator. The Blizzard authenticator is a great security mechanism and something that every WoW gamer should possess.

You can read more on choosing secure passwords and dictionary attacks on your WoW account here.

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ESRB mistakenly releases player email addresses

Many people have asked me how the bad guys get hold of our battle.net login id's - the same bad guys that inundate us with WoW phishing emails and do dictionary attacks on our battle.net logins.

The team at wow.com have published an article on how the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) managed to mistakenly release almost 1000 email addresses of wow players that wrote to them to complain about Blizzard's plan to use real names on the official wow forums.

This email list is a gold mine to the bad guys, especially where these email addresses match up with battle.net ID's.  There is little doubt that these 1000 email addresses will end up on WoW phishing lists and that they may also be targets for WoW dictionary attacks.

If you recently wrote to ESRB and you used the same email address as your battle.net ID then please consider changing your battle.net ID to a new, unique email address.

You can read more about the mess-up at Wow.com

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Patch Your Flash!

Blizzard has released an advisory warning all players to update their Adobe Flash Player.  Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 has a vulnerability that may allow an attacker to take control of your machine.

LUCYTR: A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and Adobe Reader/Acrobat 9.x, and could potentially be used to target World of Warcraft players and accounts. The newest available version of Adobe Flash 10.1, Release Candidate 7 (available at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/), does not appear to contain this vulnerability, and we recommend that everyone upgrade their Flash player as soon as possible. Earlier versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat, specifically version 8.x, do not appear to contain this vulnerability, either. 

Adobe reports that it has seen evidence of this vulnerability already being exploited.

Although the technical details are still sketchy, it is likely to require a specially crafted flash or PDF file to trigger the vulnerability.  We have seen this type of attack on Adobe flash before - where you can be infected by a keylogger/trojan by simply visiting a legitimate web page that renders this malicious code or redirects to a malicious site containing the code.

Unfortunately, Adobe don't seem to have this fix on their auto-update system so be sure to visit Adobe's Security Page and patch your machine with v10.1 today.

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Phishers Ramp Up Their WoW Assault

Phishers have begun targeting the remote auction house and cataclysm betas in the latest wave of WoW account phishing spam.

In the first example, unsuspecting users receive an email promoting the features and benefits of the remote auction house and invite them to participate in the beta by clicking on a download now link. The link takes them to a fake battle.net login site where their game details are captured.

A sample email is shown below:

A second type of phishing email is targeting the Cataclysm beta opt-in. Users are sent an email reminding them to update their system specifications to be eligible for a beta invite by logging into battle.net. Naturally, the battle.net link is a fake site designed to collect your account credentials:

Be wary of any email that pretends to come from Blizzard and check the URL of any linked site before entering your account credentials. Visit our anatomy of a phishing site post for information on how to spot phishing emails and better protect your game account.

Let us know if you have received emails scams like these.

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Suffer mortals, as your pathetic password betrays you!

One of the things we often don't put much thought into is password selection. Usually it is a loved-one's name or an easily remembered string of characters. Unfortunately, a poor choice of password can dramatically increase the chance of your game account being hacked.

In an analysis performed by Imperva of 32 million leaked passwords from rockyou.com, it was found that nearly 50% of passwords consist of people's names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords. The study estimates that if a hacker used the top 5000 passwords in a dictionary attack, it would take, on average, only 111 attempts to break into a given account.

World of Warcraft does not have an account or IP address lockout after any number of bad password attempts. This gives the bad guys an opportunity to dictionary attack your account.

Assuming that the WoW account password frequency distribution is similar and that a hacker could try a password every 2 seconds - it would take an average of only 3.7 minutes to hack an account.

Obviously the time required to hack your account is going to vary based on the strength of your game password so choosing an uncommon and complex password is key. The report lists the following as the most commonly used passwords:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou (or 'warcraft' in our case)
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

Other common passwords include monkey, qwerty, 654321 and first names of people.

How can you better protect your WoW account?

First, buy yourself an authenticator and add another layer of security to your account. A dictionary attack is largely rendered useless with the addition of a hardware token.

Second, if you don't have an authenticator or wish to be more secure then choose a strong password. Strong passwords contain numeric and non-standard characters and do not have any strings that contain dictionary words. They should be at 12-14 characters in length. However, don't bother too much with upper and lower case characters since the battle.net authentication service does not differentiate between upper/lower case. An example of strong WoW password would be something like "sdm#6wua2pa9jk".

If you have trouble remembering a strong password (and most of us will) then try to create something similar from a memorable saying. For example, Professor Putricide's "Bad news everyone! I don't think I'm going to make it" becomes "bne!idtig2mi" as your password. Such a password will be close to impossible to dictionary attack and will take a long time to brute force attack. Don't share this password with anyone and don't use this password on any other service - keep it unique to WoW only.

Finally, create a unique email address as your battle.net login. Hackers need to be able to guess or steal your username so making this complex will certainly hinder their efforts.

Update: If you want to read more about hackers stealing account usernames and passwords, check out the Symantec article where they recently discovered 44 million stolen gaming credentials.

A little bit of effort with your password selection will make hacking your precious account significantly more difficult... and don't forget to get yourself an authenticator.

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