I just caught a hacker...

Sounds like bull, unless the hacker has compromised you'r PC, or the Guild Wars server or the LAN your connected to he can't intercept your packets.

and if he had compromised your PC he wouldn't need to intercept packets.

Didn't feel like reading through all the posts about accounts being hacked and all, but I do have a question:

When somebody's account was hacked, were the victims already logged on and then got booted like the OP, or did they log in one day to find that their stuff went missing?

It's a mix of both, although the majority seems to have been offline when they got fleeced. I'm the only fortunate one (that's posted, at least) that was able to stop the hacker before he could take anything.

What I meant was can't be helped that you got hacked, could have prevented the hacking.
Who said another account? I said character not account
Thanks for ridiculing a statement that you don't understand.

Thank you all for the flames, including the Mod. But as I had stated, that was info I was told, that it was not confirmed. I under stand how packets interception works. I was posting it as UNRELIABLE information, come to your on conclusions, but there is really no need to flame someone for trying to help. As I see it That "theory" is just as sound as the rest of the other posts. If anyone was 100% sure of how it was working other than the hacker it would be fixed.

I had this happen yesterday, got those same error messages from AB that I've never gotten before.

Luckily I didn't get password invalid message though. I was able to get back in after a couple of tries.

Weird that they'd have the double AB faction points while this is a problem.

It seems many stragne things occur during AB...
Is it safe to play AB recently? Especially Granz.
I thought my GW.exe crashed once threre. (not disconnection)

I was not in AB when I got hacked, I dont ever do PvP...

Sorry for your loss...those zaishen keys could have sold for 235k lol.

(43 X 5000 = 235000) Assuming they still sell for 5k each

i am not sure if i understande all of this but as much i know "your" account is actualy a account owned by anet(thats why you cant sell it legaly) and any when somebody hacks the account....well you get what i mean....it isnt your account it is from anet and why the hell would you have to report the crime?

Does the above work without having to confirm with an email from the email account that you originally registered the game with? I don't have the same email account and would like to be able to change my password. Anyone know if you can get anet - plaync to change the email address for you?

Woohoo, what a comfort!!

sorry way to many posts to read but r u sure u got hacked? or you have done something that made you forget what you have done? if i had the skills to hack, i would definetly have the smarts to just transfer over the keys. its stupid to open the chest with your account. this story doesnt make sense

I think you need to read a bit more to understand what happened...



I guess their argument is that the attempted theft of items from one account to another is not a crime...

...but the use of malicious programs to hack into an individual's computer is a crime.

they hacked their account not your computer

all this seems to me is that A-net is hiding from the fact of doing real work. The Police are'nt going to do shit about a game, I mean really. If I walked up to a police officier and told them I got hacked on my guildwars account all they would do is laugh in my face or put it to the side. I just find it silly that A-net won't take any action to a hacking and look into it instead of leading a person on. I would actually like to see a real representative from A-net post on this, I would really like to have a discussion with one, but it seems they are too busy banning gold sellers and not looking into things that are even more worse then they seem to be. But oh well this is my opinion and my view on the whole thing. I have seen other games take care of their players better then Guild wars has ever done. I still play GW yes, but my hope in A-net as a whole is lacking badly. And I would like to see a real reply from a A-net rep on this forum to clear things up.

Way to go, Jet!

This is concerning, though. I don't know how it would be a vulnerability in the Alliance Battle system.

....Actually, let's find out. Guild Wars was a well-secured program last time I checked, but why not? I'm curious now. Instead of just chewing the fat, let's actually look at the silly thing.

I'm going to run Wireshark, a TCP/IP protocol analyzer, on my local system through Administrative privileges. Wireshark can watch the actual data packets sent back and forth between my computer and the ArenaNet servers. (Take a look: wireshark_login.jpg)

There. Good and healthy. It uses an encryption standard I'm not familiar with (not something that happens every day...) but it's definitely encrypted. Unlike... say... most guild web sites. (Take another look: wireshark_guildsite.jpg)

If you take that as any measure, ArenaNet knows what they're doing. That suggests a problem with local security, not game security: that you need to lock down your own system, not worry about hackers from the outside. It's much more likely that the computer was attacked, and not the game itself.

I propose an infosec sticky. Everyone here should know basic information defense, along the lines of a post made earlier in this thread. (That was a great post.)

And Devilince: If ArenaNet wasn't doing real work, you'd see my Guild Wars login information in plaintext, not ciphertext. So don't think they're just running around giving themselves piggyback rides all day.

~Rico


(...Hey, I know stuff.)

Members of a well known project to emulate Guild wars were able to decrypt that information. It wouldn't surprise me if thats how people's account information was stolen.

Really? Nice. I'll have to look it up.

My point wasn't that the encryption would be our Savior, though. What I meant was that ArenaNet isn't incompetent, as a good handful of players seem to think. I would still target the client machine first.

To say the least that is what it seems they are doing. It isn ot only the players responsibility, but it is the companies responsibility to help better with hackings and stuff. What I reado n the first page of what Regina sent to the original poster stated quite well they don't want to handle it. I'am just stating my opinion like I said.

Decrypt it? Even if they figured out the algorithm used to encrypt/decrypt the packets, there's probably additional hashing going on for the username and password. I highly doubt they can steal the account information that way, like Rico said it's far easier to target the client machine and simply steal the information before it's encrypted.