[rawr] Deletion Incident

Over the weekend, the leader of Rebel Rising [rawr] was the target of a malicious incident. It is unknown exactly how it was done, but someone gained control of his account and deleted all of his characters.

There is no technology currently in place to restore deleted accounts, characters, levels, XP, items, or gold if someone has taken control of a player's account information and deleted these items. They are lost to the player forever, and they have not been restored to the player in this case either.

An existing Rebel Rising member discovered that the guild had been deleted and after some communication amongst RAWR members about the malicious incident, quickly reclaimed the Rebel Rising [rawr] guild name and re-invited all of existing members.

Cape trims are tied to the guild name, regardless of who owns the guild or whether the guild has been deleted and subsequently remade. The guild's name is unique and the guild owns the cape trim. After this incident, Rebel Rising's [rawr] gold cape trim was restored. The other guilds that placed in the May tournament were awarded their cape trims as well.

Rebel Rising’s ranking in the ladder has not been restored. Currently, there are no automated provisions for restoring guild ladder ranking in incidents like this. There are currently no plans to restore Rebel Rising's ranking in the guild ladder.

Tied to this issue is the perception that "hacking" incidents have increased in recent months and that the hacking is a result of security compromises on our part. The Guild Wars game servers themselves have not been subject to security compromises in any of the reported hacking incidents. These incidents have been the result of security compromises on the player side, not on the ArenaNet server side.

There are many ways in which a malicious person could gain control of someone’s account: sharing access to your account, key logging programs, RMT activity, fake websites that ask you to enter your account information (social engineering/phishing), etc. If you suspect that your account security may have been compromised, please contact support here.

Except it's not hacking in any way, shape or form. The account was cracked or phished through means of a malicious program or by someone who knew them and could communicate with them.

ouch, not even a guild ladder compromise?

Just a thought: could the 'malicious person' have done this to waken people up to the fact that Anet has no way of restoring stolen accounts (Is it even possible to know who you are stealing the account from?) Are there plans to create a system like this, or at least an 'email to delete pve chars' coding?

Maybe the first in a long chain of attacks

I feel bad for Awowa.

Wow that sucks. It's interesting that a person's account cannot be set back, but the server can. I wonder how the two ideas differ from a programming standard.

thanks for the official word on this.

however, i've got a question:

what would happen if i someone else would've claimed the name "Rebel Rising [rawr]"? someone who is not related to [rawr] at all. would you have restored the cape for that person too, whoever it might be? because afterall, the trim belongs to the "Name"?

They are good, they will be able to get their rank back up pretty quick. Besides, rank doesn't matter remember? They will be fine, but it is good to see ANet is treating this the same way as any other account breach. They can't give you your stuff back and rawr isn't really getting any special treatment. Had that happened we would of heard alot of complaining, so it's probably better this way. Thanks for the explination Regina!

Assuming they're storing accounts and everything else in a database such as MySQL; then it is completely possible if they make proper backups.

Its a matter of laziness on their part.

Any plans to develop and implement such a technology?

Numerous account hacks and exploits occurred over the past few months. Some exploits, such as Mallyx outpost, involved hacking the client. While it is clear that many hacks happen due to carelessness of users, Anet does have some responsibility. Indeed, Anet fixes the exploits relatively quickly (although some claim otherwise), but we all know that prevention is always better than healing. Will Anet take any steps to improve account and client security and prevent such event from happening in the future?

Thats bogus. I am sorry but I am happy rawr is getting there trims back and stuff but are you kidding the trims are tied to the guild name. So during the time they were deleted if I were to go make Rebel Rising[rawr] I could have had gold trims?......that needs to be changed for incident like this were to ever happened again. Seeing as it has happened twice.

I am sorry Awowa about your stuff if you need help getting armor/items PM me on guru if you get this. I love you guys and whoever did this to you is messing with bad voodoo.

Btw aren't you guys allowed to track ip's now since terms update. During the period that the account was hacked and guild deleted look at the ip that was logged into your server and ban it. Come on it isn't that hard to do.

well, if it was 100 ectos stolen, and then deleted character, they could easily track the trade on demand from the server, if they can go in your account to see if there were any transactions with gold sellers. in case #1 you need the info to know who is the hacker and what is his IP, then restore the code i guess.

c'mon, they were able to know who are gold sellers/buyers, and can trace the transaction of 1000k for nothing and KNOW it is your account or IP so they can ban you. if they can do that, exactly what is stoping them from use of this ability for our security?

i was playing for a while another game that was free for play as well. when your account would get hacked, you could always whisper a game master IN GAME and not email support, and then they would retrieve the transaction info, and restore your items as they were. and that game, had much more simpler mechanics.

Do you know how easy it is to mask your IP address?

Guess you shouldn't share your account with people. Lesson learned?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't someone he willingly gave his account info to.

GG Anet using Microsoft servers.

gogo Linux. My laptop is more secure.

Even so, if you give people your account info, you deserve all you get.

And why exactly arent there any safety nets in place to prevent the permanent loss of customer data?

No kidding. Seconded. Even if its a weekly sort of thing, any sort of a backup is better then nothing at all.