WoW Phishing Scheme

[Maeve]

So, I awoke this morning to find an email on my blackberry from [e-mail] titled "World of Warcraft- Account Change Notice".

**I deleted the links**

Greetings!

This is an automated notification regarding your World of Warcraft 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.

You can login to Account Management at the following link to review your account settings:
*link deleted*

*** If you did NOT make any changes to your account, we recommend you change your password and make appropriate corrections as soon as possible to ensure account security.

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.

Billing & Account Services can be reached at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (1-800-592-5499 Mon-Fri, 8Am-8PM Pacific Time) or at [e-mail].

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives will typically lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Regards,
The World of Warcraft Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment
*link deleted*

Great. I'm not even playing the game and I get hacked. Grumbling about having to deal with this crap for a game I'm not playing, desperately waiting for the coffee pot to finish it's job, my mind starts to wake up.

Wait. This email came to my Yahoo account. I don't think I've ever used my Yahoo account for Blizzard or Battle Net. I look at the message again, scanning for the usual grammar or spelling problems I've seen in other phishing schemes.

Ok, this one is pretty good. I don't really see any typos or poorly put together English. But what is this business about Blizzard billing only being open Monday through Friday? That doesn't seem right for a company with millions of people across the world playing it. And I haven't played this game in at least 3 months. Why would it get hacked now? Wouldn't these farmers and malcontents get fired or assassinated or what not for being so lazy at their jobs?

Needless to say, I didn't click on any of the links. I checked my Battle Net account info, and sure enough, no Yahoo email associated with it or Blizzard. I went ahead and changed my password and verified that my account was indeed still frozen.

Here is the official email from Battle.net regarding a change in password.

Hello Heather,

This is an automated notification regarding the recent change(s) made to your Battle.net account: xxxxxxxxxxxx.

Your password has recently been modified through the Account Management website.

*** If you made this password change, please disregard this notification.

However, if you did NOT make any changes to your password, we recommend you contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for assistance keeping your account as secure as possible.

For more information, click here for answers to Frequently Asked Questions or to contact the Blizzard Billing & Account Services team.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Sincerely,
The Battle.net Account Team
Online Privacy Policy

The main difference you will see is that they use my name in the email. And of course the official email does not have any links to use within the email, other than a link to a faq.

I found this to be a pretty clever phishing scheme. Someone trying their best to thwart a hack will then get hacked. If it wasn't for the fact that I realized I didn't use my Yahoo account for WoW, I may have fallen for it. Or if it had actually come to an email account that I did use, I might have gotten hacked again.

[Zeli]

I got that a couple weeks ago to my work email address which is not linked to my wow or battle.net account. I sent it on to blizzard using [e-mail].

[Takzenen]

As the prey evolves, so does the predator

No but seriously, people are bastards.

[Maeve]

Jan 9, 2010 10:20:44 GMT -5 Takzenen said:

As the prey evolves, so does the predator

I think that is right. The fact that they have moved on to phishing makes me think that keylogging isn't as rewarding as it once was. Perhaps because of the Blizzard authenticator or because more players are aware of malware and running programs to block it.

I've never seen a phishing scheme for anything besides banks before. It makes me wonder if they are really just after your in game gold and items. If that's all they want, it shows even more what big time money this is.

[Macaubre]

Jan 10, 2010 9:25:18 GMT -5 Maeve said:

It makes me wonder if they are really just after your in game gold and items. If that's all they want, it shows even more what big time money this is.

I read somewhere that there's more money now in stealing gold from a game like WoW than is trying to get into your bank account. It's much easier and a lot less troublesome to get the money out of the source to their grubby hands.

[Zeli]

I got another one of those emails to the email addie that my wow account is attached to so I went ahead and got the authenticator for my iphone.

The new care packs they are offering make it not worth the risk.

[Dachartach]

Yikes. Like I said before, I was there when a guild member got hacked, right when he was online. That is some heinous mess, and I hope you all are being careful in there, you know, using protection and all.







have you got protection? here. stick the blade in the thigh, you'll hit a lot of big veins and arteries there. then, and this is important, twist the blade so the wound doesn't close.