Account hacked - what would you do? - Page 2 - Guild Wars Forums

Hephaestus Ram · May 23, 2011, 03:12 AM // 03:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by deluxe

The time has arrived for NCSoft to tighten their security, too many accounts have been hacked.
My characters were decked out with every single armor, I had loads of high-end gear, 20+ r8 shields, multiple stacks of ecto's, some stacks of zkeys, 3 6th year gifts I just received.

You don't know how many accounts have actually been hacked.

Any number of these people could be claiming they were hacked just to try and compel Anet to
establish a policy of replacing lot items to hacked accounts. There could be a whole army of
people just waiting for that to happen so they can give their stuff away and get replacements
from anet.

There are tens of thousands of others that would make no attempt at all to secure their accounts
if they thought Anet would replace their stuff if hacked.

There are thousands of people that have given others their account information... been hacked,
and just refuse to admit their own involvement.

I've been in dozens of guilds over the years where I've seen members give their information to
other members so they could help them transfer items between accounts. In one case I'd only
been in the guild for like twenty minutes when a guy offered to give me his account info so I
could pass some of his stuff to his other account.

How many accounts actually get "hacked" is hard to say, But I'm sure YOU have no way of
knowing that information.

OP

I'd be really bummed, but I'd stil play. There are still lots of people playing and a lot of the game is
like a new area every time you play through it with a new group of people.

**cosyfiep** · May 23, 2011, 04:30 AM // 04:30

hm, I have not finished my goals in this game (most of which have nothing to do with the HoM)...so I would be kinda (ok very) upset and would probably not play on that account again (and would not bother to buy any other products from anet).
It would tell me--its time to stop playing video games now.

Aeronwen · May 23, 2011, 01:31 PM // 13:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowfell

.

I know Blizzard has a huge problem with inactive accounts being damaged by hackers, so.. how do they know if your account is active or not? It's a curious question without an exact answer and does NCsoft have the same issue?

yes I am suspicious about this. There does seem to be a large number of inactive accounts being hacked. I expect we will never know but it does look like at least an NCsoft employee selling account details - or maybe even company policy ^^

Banana_Phone · May 23, 2011, 01:52 PM // 13:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aeronwen

yes I am suspicious about this. There does seem to be a large number of inactive accounts being hacked. I expect we will never know but it does look like at least an NCsoft employee selling account details - or maybe even company policy ^^

Are you being facetious? Because it would be an awesomely stupid allegation if not.

Bran Signe · May 23, 2011, 02:32 PM // 14:32

Well, from experience, I was hacked back in December. Mind you, I'm far from elite, but I just bit the bullet and resumed with my fun. If you enjoy the game, keep playing.

ggShaquira · May 23, 2011, 03:27 PM // 15:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aeronwen

yes I am suspicious about this. There does seem to be a large number of inactive accounts being hacked. I expect we will never know but it does look like at least an NCsoft employee selling account details - or maybe even company policy ^^

I find that hard to believe, i have been inactive for 2,5 years.
Come back to find all my stuff intact (*)

However, i do realise it is certainly not impossible

(*) My accounts were inaccessible due to the new security measures, but with the help of NCsoft i regained access within 48 hours.

Aeronwen · May 23, 2011, 08:02 PM // 20:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Banana_Phone

Are you being facetious? Because it would be an awesomely stupid allegation if not.

why? well the last bit was facetious....but after my amazon account was hacked the resulting police investigation found an amazon employee was selling account details, and no I don't know how they got to see the pw's. But if it can happen at Amazon why not NCSoft?

shadowfell · May 25, 2011, 02:06 AM // 02:06

The strangest thing happened today. I was in Kamadan, looking for things when someone whispers me with something they have. They open trade and it's a frog scepter, like my old one, that was stolen in the hack a few days ago. I didn't think about it at first, asked him how much. He named a price that was cheap, I lowballed him and closed trade. He relented, opened trade and sold it to me for my price.

I was about to leave when he opened trade again and started putting things into it. More frogs, and all kinds of them. I wasn't suspicious yet, but then asked.."Do you have a spawning compass"

He opens trade and puts in a spawning compass, r9, modded identical to mine, which was not 20/20. I did a double take and noticed the gold value, which was also IDENTICAL to my own, missing one.

I then looked up my earth frog from the thread I was selling it in and compared it to the one he'd just sold me. IDENTICAL gold value. Now, I know gold values vary, so what are the odds of him having several items matching both in req/mod and gold value to my own?

And what do I do about it?

Hephaestus Ram · May 25, 2011, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowfell

The strangest thing happened today. I was in Kamadan, looking for things when someone whispers me with something they have. They open trade and it's a frog scepter, like my old one, that was stolen in the hack a few days ago. I didn't think about it at first, asked him how much. He named a price that was cheap, I lowballed him and closed trade. He relented, opened trade and sold it to me for my price.

I was about to leave when he opened trade again and started putting things into it. More frogs, and all kinds of them. I wasn't suspicious yet, but then asked.."Do you have a spawning compass"

He opens trade and puts in a spawning compass, r9, modded identical to mine, which was not 20/20. I did a double take and noticed the gold value, which was also IDENTICAL to my own, missing one.

I then looked up my earth frog from the thread I was selling it in and compared it to the one he'd just sold me. IDENTICAL gold value. Now, I know gold values vary, so what are the odds of him having several items matching both in req/mod and gold value to my own?

And what do I do about it?

You sound just like the kind of "person" I was talking about in my previous post.
Gave your account information to someone in a guild you were in and forgot all
about them until they came back to scew (is that an allowed word) you.

I joined a guild a few weeks ago that insisted that I use my in game name and my
email address to log on to their site. I used a "hotmail" address, they told me I had
to use a "real" email or they couldn't accept me. I don't even use my real email or
in game name on these forums. That's two thirds of the information you'd need to
steal my account.

Needless to say ...they they refused me into their guild. I feel lucky.

Irishguinea · May 25, 2011, 05:01 AM // 05:01

I recently had to deal with - PWS-Mmorpg.gen! - its a key logger to steal game passwords. I can say my pc is locked down tighter than a you know what. Luckily that saved any info from leaving my pc and my account getting hacked. Apparently this thing has been around a while but I had no idea about it so I want to share this info. incase there are other peeps having this issue.

It started about two months ago when I started looking for Tyrian maps to finish my cartographer title. I googled a few places looking for 100% maps and I read the cartography thread on here and dl'd textmod and some maps that were posted.

I have no idea where I actually got it but I did. I realized I had something because I would come here reading threads and randomly (sometimes within 2 minutes sometimes after 20 minutes) my IE would redirect to some other page. I would quit before it finished loading. But it was only doing it while I was on this site. So I scanned with McAfee, Spyboy SD and Malwarebytes. Nothing. It kept doing it. So I scanned again. McAfee finally did find it and said it quarantined it. So then I started getting redirected again this time only when I was on GWG2 forums! Scanned again with all three in normal mode and safe mode. Nothing.

Called my buddy, a pc guru, and he recommended smitRem.

smitRem found it and cleaned it out completely and I have not had any issues in over a week now. I ran it in safe mode w/networking. That way it can dl microsofts repair panel (don't know if thats the exact name for it). He said you need to be careful when using it because it can delete system files if bad things have attached themselves on them so have the OS cd handy to replace them if they need to be deleted. But it should prompt you first. Also it will clean your host file so if you have added any software updater ip's to block you'll need to replace them.

But we found it had buried itself in my external HD and changed some ip configs, etc... trying to steal my passwords.

All I know is without that program I would still have it. So this is for peeps who run AV and Spybot and Malewarebytes. It may not be finding it.

If your account has been hacked you may still have this thing on your system or one like it. So beware. In no way am I implying I got it from a link on this site, I'm just letting you know what was happening to me in case it's happening to you.

This is also a nice site he sent me to to test my router ports http://www.grc.com

Click "Services/shields up" and choose "all service ports" right in the middle of the page. It will let you know if you have vulnerable ports that you should address.

shadowfell · May 25, 2011, 06:16 AM // 06:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hephaestus Ram

You sound just like the kind of "person" I was talking about in my previous post.
Gave your account information to someone in a guild you were in and forgot all
about them until they came back to scew (is that an allowed word) you.

I joined a guild a few weeks ago that insisted that I use my in game name and my
email address to log on to their site. I used a "hotmail" address, they told me I had
to use a "real" email or they couldn't accept me. I don't even use my real email or
in game name on these forums. That's two thirds of the information you'd need to
steal my account.

Needless to say ...they they refused me into their guild. I feel lucky.

I've never given a single person my account information but continue to make your broad, generic and untrue statements about people.

Urcscumug · May 25, 2011, 03:02 PM // 15:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aeronwen

There does seem to be a large number of inactive accounts being hacked.

If you put yourself in the shoes of the bad guys for a moment you'll realise why that is. They need bots, and if they hijack an active account the owner will notice immediately and have NCSoft reset the login info.

So what they do is, they get your login info (most likely via spyware sitting on your computer), then they check to see how often you log in. If a certain time has passed and you haven't logged in, they consider it "safe" to start botting with that account.

There's no causality ie. if you don't play for a while -> you get hacked. The way they get your info has nothing to do with what they will do once they get into your account and how long they'll wait to do that. It depends on other factors. If an account's characters have very important valuables it may be worth more to them to just loot them instantly. If they don't, they're more likely to lay low and use them for botting after a while of you not playing.

deluxe · May 25, 2011, 07:22 PM // 19:22

Finally got back my account...
EVERYTHING is gone... my fissures, my expensive shields, stacks of ecto's, cash, zkeys, everything.
I still have my customized crystallines, but that's about it.
I'm pretty RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing mad right now.

How did they manage to change my password??? Even I had trouble remembering secret questions...

Urcscumug · May 25, 2011, 07:43 PM // 19:43

Now that's a good question.

shadowfell · May 25, 2011, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Something my boyfriend recommended, is to fill secret questions with answers that are actually not true and then to further cement the security of those answers by having them appended with gibberish. The answer has to be exact and unfortunately, it's easy for someone to find out things about you if you happened to use the same email for facebook, or something. They could easily find out names of pets, family, city you were born in, primary and secondary educations, etc.

Of course, you have to remember those answers too, which I'd recommend doing on an OFF drive file, like maintained on a memory stick or something.

deluxe · May 25, 2011, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowfell

Something my boyfriend recommended, is to fill secret questions with answers that are actually not true and then to further cement the security of those answers by having them appended with gibberish. The answer has to be exact and unfortunately, it's easy for someone to find out things about you if you happened to use the same email for facebook, or something. They could easily find out names of pets, family, city you were born in, primary and secondary educations, etc.

Of course, you have to remember those answers too, which I'd recommend doing on an OFF drive file, like maintained on a memory stick or something.

I had my mothers maiden name as question, its only on her passport and isn't used elsewhere..
Something is fishy here.

May 23, 2011, 04:30 AM // 04:30	#22
cosyfiep are we there yet? Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: in a land far far away Guild: guild? I am supposed to have a guild? Profession: Rt/	hm, I have not finished my goals in this game (most of which have nothing to do with the HoM)...so I would be kinda (ok very) upset and would probably not play on that account again (and would not bother to buy any other products from anet). It would tell me--its time to stop playing video games now. __________________ where is the 'all you can eat' cookie bar?

May 25, 2011, 07:22 PM // 19:22	#33
deluxe Desert Nomad Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Monkeyball Z Guild: S.K.A.T. [Ban] Profession: Mo/	Finally got back my account... EVERYTHING is gone... my fissures, my expensive shields, stacks of ecto's, cash, zkeys, everything. I still have my customized crystallines, but that's about it. I'm pretty RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing mad right now. How did they manage to change my password??? Even I had trouble remembering secret questions... Last edited by deluxe; May 25, 2011 at 07:25 PM // 19:25..

May 23, 2011, 02:32 PM // 14:32	#25
Bran Signe Frost Gate Guardian Join Date: Oct 2005 Profession: Me/	Well, from experience, I was hacked back in December. Mind you, I'm far from elite, but I just bit the bullet and resumed with my fun. If you enjoy the game, keep playing.

May 25, 2011, 02:06 AM // 02:06	#28
shadowfell hamonite anur ruk Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Echovald Forest Guild: [PhD] Teh Academy Profession: Me/A	The strangest thing happened today. I was in Kamadan, looking for things when someone whispers me with something they have. They open trade and it's a frog scepter, like my old one, that was stolen in the hack a few days ago. I didn't think about it at first, asked him how much. He named a price that was cheap, I lowballed him and closed trade. He relented, opened trade and sold it to me for my price. I was about to leave when he opened trade again and started putting things into it. More frogs, and all kinds of them. I wasn't suspicious yet, but then asked.."Do you have a spawning compass" He opens trade and puts in a spawning compass, r9, modded identical to mine, which was not 20/20. I did a double take and noticed the gold value, which was also IDENTICAL to my own, missing one. I then looked up my earth frog from the thread I was selling it in and compared it to the one he'd just sold me. IDENTICAL gold value. Now, I know gold values vary, so what are the odds of him having several items matching both in req/mod and gold value to my own? And what do I do about it?

May 25, 2011, 05:01 AM // 05:01	#30
Irishguinea Ascalonian Squire Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Virginia Guild: FWF Profession: W/P	I recently had to deal with - PWS-Mmorpg.gen! - its a key logger to steal game passwords. I can say my pc is locked down tighter than a you know what. Luckily that saved any info from leaving my pc and my account getting hacked. Apparently this thing has been around a while but I had no idea about it so I want to share this info. incase there are other peeps having this issue. It started about two months ago when I started looking for Tyrian maps to finish my cartographer title. I googled a few places looking for 100% maps and I read the cartography thread on here and dl'd textmod and some maps that were posted. I have no idea where I actually got it but I did. I realized I had something because I would come here reading threads and randomly (sometimes within 2 minutes sometimes after 20 minutes) my IE would redirect to some other page. I would quit before it finished loading. But it was only doing it while I was on this site. So I scanned with McAfee, Spyboy SD and Malwarebytes. Nothing. It kept doing it. So I scanned again. McAfee finally did find it and said it quarantined it. So then I started getting redirected again this time only when I was on GWG2 forums! Scanned again with all three in normal mode and safe mode. Nothing. Called my buddy, a pc guru, and he recommended smitRem. smitRem found it and cleaned it out completely and I have not had any issues in over a week now. I ran it in safe mode w/networking. That way it can dl microsofts repair panel (don't know if thats the exact name for it). He said you need to be careful when using it because it can delete system files if bad things have attached themselves on them so have the OS cd handy to replace them if they need to be deleted. But it should prompt you first. Also it will clean your host file so if you have added any software updater ip's to block you'll need to replace them. But we found it had buried itself in my external HD and changed some ip configs, etc... trying to steal my passwords. All I know is without that program I would still have it. So this is for peeps who run AV and Spybot and Malewarebytes. It may not be finding it. If your account has been hacked you may still have this thing on your system or one like it. So beware. In no way am I implying I got it from a link on this site, I'm just letting you know what was happening to me in case it's happening to you. This is also a nice site he sent me to to test my router ports http://www.grc.com Click "Services/shields up" and choose "all service ports" right in the middle of the page. It will let you know if you have vulnerable ports that you should address.

May 25, 2011, 07:43 PM // 19:43	#34
Urcscumug Krytan Explorer Join Date: Jan 2011 Guild: UNO Profession: W/	Now that's a good question.

May 25, 2011, 07:49 PM // 19:49	#35
shadowfell hamonite anur ruk Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Echovald Forest Guild: [PhD] Teh Academy Profession: Me/A	Something my boyfriend recommended, is to fill secret questions with answers that are actually not true and then to further cement the security of those answers by having them appended with gibberish. The answer has to be exact and unfortunately, it's easy for someone to find out things about you if you happened to use the same email for facebook, or something. They could easily find out names of pets, family, city you were born in, primary and secondary educations, etc. Of course, you have to remember those answers too, which I'd recommend doing on an OFF drive file, like maintained on a memory stick or something.