Account Hackings - The Source

Thank you for sticking this thread, I would have missed it.

This is the most serious problem I've seen come out of Guild Wars in all these years. I hope they decided to beef up security measures for GW2 after this debacle.

sounds like they need to disable the Ncsoft and cash shop till they can figure out what's going on and get it fixed.

Apparently, they can log into your NC account. If there are support tickets with character names there, they get the char name, login is there as well, and to change the password they don't need the old one, so they can change it, no problem...[well, there's a security question now, after their own employee got hacked]

I'm not sure any employee of any company would ever admit to screw-up that big, unless faced with hard evidence [which seems to be happening right now].

That's the big issue here. This isn't really an ArenaNet problem, and I doubt there's much ArenaNet can do about it from what I've seen. This is NCSoft, and any game put out by ArenaNet will share this problem until NCSoft gets their shit together. All we can really do is make it public knowledge and force their hand.

Anet is a wholly owned subsidiary of ncsoft. if ncsoft tells anet to tow the party line, anet must comply. this includes lying through their teeth.

so basically, nobody can prove in any way whether anet is responsible for this issue, because all their official support is doing, is echoing whatever ncsoft is telling them to.

That it's a minority should have you be concerned. They probably got had by the usual keylogger, trojan, scam, other sites selling info methods.

What's worst of all is NCSoft won't ever acknlowedge this, so we won't even know if it ever gets fixed. How can anyone consider buying future NCSoft products not knowing whether it will be stolen tomorrow or not?

So if there aren't support tickets there is no way to obtain the character name and my characters should be safe, right?

Wow. Just...Wow. Epic. I think ALOT of people, not just NCsoft and Anet, but members of our own community, HAVE ALOT OF Fing APPLOGIZING TO DO TO ALL THOSE WHO WERE HACKED. Too long everyone has pointed the finger at those that were hacked as idiots or scumbag gold buyers and NO ONE listened when they pleaded that they werent. How do you all feel about yourselves now? All of you should be ashamed. Always thinking the worst about others and here all along those that were hacked... THEY WERE RIGHT, they didnt do anything wrong at all. But guilty til proven innocent it seems they have been treated. And now they have been proven innocent.

TO NCSOFT AND ANET,

Something seriously will need to be addressed to the community after all of this. How many people have you lost because they were wrongfully accused? How many wont be buying your products because of this and lack of trust in how you do things? I know, I for one, am seriously shaken by this information and all that has led up to this. Your companies have handled this with deplorable action and result. Constantly blaming the users, and other sites, when all along it was issues within your own company. My trust in your future products is NIL at the moment, and I will be seriously watching to see how this is handled before I will EVER purchase another game from ANY of your companies again, til I am satisfied with how this plays out. And Im sure I am not the only one who feels like this.

People pay real life money for your products. They spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours playing your product and working on their content. Having that all taken away in the blink of an eye is gut-wrenching. Having everyone saying its their fault, when they know its not, is soul breaking. I hope you learn a valuable lesson here. In the future, it would be better to admit you have no idea how something like this is done, and ASK the community for thier help, in helping you find answers, instead of jumping to conclusions and alienating your consumer. If the consumer looses faith in your company, then you will ultimately loose in your pocketbook as well. And things such as this can break your company. So far your track record here is looking pretty bad. How will you restore our faith?

They tricked us into linking the account to get the storage pane. Now they want us to connect GW1 to GW2 through Hall of monuments. Dont think so...
Someone better steal a frog to get some action from NCsoft <--- joke

while that sounds good, I hate to break it to you Like this...

These recent "hack" issues plaguing GW are stemming from Aion and it's addition to the family. can I confirm that?...no. just call it a hunch..

why dont they just have a system where u can only log in and out 5 times a day? so if you make a mistake or something.

sorry, tramp, but that seems to be the unconfirmed consensus. unconfirmed by Anet/NCSoft, that is.

theoritically, yes.

NCSoft, disable your freaking page already!

I can only imagine the amount of chinese bots <_<

as i mentioned earlier, i only recall hearing about this large number of people getting hacked after aion's release. could something have been messed up when aion was added to the database?

has anyone accidently gotten logged into an account that didn't have aion on it yet? of course those who have done this on purpose probably won't reveal it if they had. how many of those people that had their accounts stolen did not have aion? is it possible there's a connection to when aion got released?

As far as the problems being linked to having an Aion account, I don't know about anyone else, but I was hacked awhile back and GW is the only NCsoft game I have....

The most likely connection is simply one of timing - when Aion was released, it triggered a ton of people wanting to make money by selling gold in Aion, so account theft attack attempts increased. If it so happened that they got into a GW account as well...that was just the hackers good fortune (and the real account holder's bad luck).

i.e. Aion provided visibility/motivation to try, and exposed GW in the process.

/edit
Above poster beat me to it ;-p

I personally think the 'hackers' are getting a bonus, meaning their primary target is, in fact Aion, but they are getting other account info via NCsoft main.

Don't get me wrong. there is still a problem with NCsoft's account page. It has me staying far away from it. if you know what I mean.

So Gaile still sucks at what she does and still tries to cover stuff up with lies even when she's a support personnel and the issue is very serious?

Why am I not surprised.....

I haven't played GW for ages now. I did play Aion recently though so I guess I'll head over to plaync and randomly login to someone's account... I mean try to login to my own account, and see if it's still my own...

Thanks for the headups!

You don't have to solve the problem. You just have to stop the bleeding to buy time to solve the problem. Shutting down the NCSoft site, or shutting off its ability to reset GW/Aion passwords is enough of a solution for now. A complete fix can be worked out while the system is offline and not harming anyone. It should only take a few seconds to flip the circuit breakers to the NCSoft server room.

Ohhh crap. This just keeps getting worse.

The revelations about how easily the NCSoft account could be brute forced were bad. The revelation that enough logins will eventually take you to someone else's account are even worse. But this takes the cake. I'm damn near speechless.

Well, now that I've composed myself, I have this to say:

Dear Gaile, Mike O'Brien, and other a-net folks,
The time has come to think seriously about biting the hand that feeds you. I'm sure that you've been aware for some time that NCSoft has major security problems. I'm sure that you could and probably would like to change GW to ignore password resets from the NCSoft account. I'm sure that you've received unequivocal orders from on high that the official response you are to make is to stonewall and pretend there's no problem, no matter how high the evidence mounts. I'm sure you've been obeying this order, not because you agree that stonewalling is a good idea, but because you understand that disobeying NCSoft is quite likely to spell the end of your time at a-net, if not the end of a-net altogether. Well, here's the hard truth for you: Allowing the status quo to continue is even more certain to spell the end of a-net. No one in their right mind is going to buy GW2 (or any other NCSoft title) once they find out that this is the ongoing security situation NCSoft expects them to live with. And it's going to end up widespread news -- real news that spills over the boundaries of this insular little forum world -- if account thefts continue apace. And they're going to continue apace (in fact I'd be shocked if they didn't increase), if vulnerabilities like that remain in place. You are looking at likely ruin on one hand versus certain ruin on the other. All I can say is "choose likely ruin"; it's your best option. If NCSoft won't fix their site, and won't agree to let you endrun the problem with changes to GW, and you acquiesce to that, then you're going to have to look on as your studio dies a slow, embarrassing death as the wholly-owned subsidiary of a laughingstock. Since that's your alternative, you might as well give NCSoft one last entreaty to remove their heads from the sand, then, should it fail, go forward and implement a GW-side fix on your own initiative, come what may and hell to pay.

Good luck.

Oh great, nice F up NCSoft.

Probably. However, they might still figure it out, if:
a) the name of your NCsoft master account is the same as one of your forum names AND you posted your IGN using that forum name... or
b) the name of your NCsoft master account is the same as one of your IGNs

i'm kind of surprised that a company as large as ncsoft is willing to allow this to continue. wonder if they even realize the ramifications this has down in the future for them . ..

think someone could get this posted on the front page for more visibility?

still no response from anyone from anet in this thread . ..

even though regina posted on the wiki about this, it sure seems like the hat issue was a bigger deal to them than this . ..

First thing: If they haven't disabled the login for PlayNC yet, they're full of shit.

Second, I love how I go away when things are pretty okay, and I come back and they've gone all to hell. Way to encourage me to come back, NCSoft.

So right now it's not ANet's fault about the website; that's NCSoft. But it is their fault for trying to throw BULLSHIT at us and hope it covers up the problem rather then, y'know, being HONEST.

Cool, guys. Real cool. You have just obliterated my interest in ever doing anything in GW again and seriously decreased my resolve to buy GW2. I refuse to waste any of my time in a game where everything I have done could be erased overnight. 'Cause, y'know, I like my account security. I like having my account well-protected. I like official websites that don't allow people to randomly hack my account. I like being able to contact a mod about an account problem and actually have it solved within a matter of hours, or a couple days at most. I like knowing that were my account ever to be hacked, I would be able to have everything restored.

But ANet and NCSoft, you don't do that, do you? Nope, but other people do. Namely people who begin with a B and end with a D and actually believe in a little thing called CUSTOMER SERVICE.

So yeah. Thanks to all the people who figured this out, and I hope everyone who was hacked is able to recover in some way, and that no one else gets hacked. At least the community believes in working together.

But NCSoft, I ain't coming back until you sprout yourselves a brain and start giving a damn. Just yesterday I had reconciled with the decline of GW and had been willing to forgive all of ANet's perceived failings. That's pretty damn generous, all things considered. But I draw the line at security. I'll come back when you get your gorram act together.

In the meantime, I've got some quests on the Hellfire Peninsula to deal with.

Holy crap, thank god I'm lazy. I said "why bother" as soon as I spent more than 4 minutes trying to figure out how to link my account.

Scary business, this is...

Absolutely

A bit more emphatic than I would have put it, but yes!

If I log in from any time after today, and find my account hacked there is no way in hell I'm buying GW2.

Kanye: "Yo Erys I'm gunna let you finsh...but Zho is the best Interrupt henchmen of ALL time"

On a serious note. This is quite disturbing, i for one wasn't worried about my accounts security AT all but this is slightly scarey. Its pretty annoyed to be honest but just hope they sort out any problems. I think the whole character name thing in the login screen a good step forward however some of us have put our character names up in a few places such as wiki let alone our support tickets

i think a lot of people who have found out about this issue are probably going to stay away from gw2 regardless if they get hacked or not until we get confirmation from ncsoft and/or anet that its been fixed. the only way they're going to pay attention to this is if its going to hurt their earnings.


again, easiest bandaid for this would be to either require the old password to change the password (something that almost all online places do) or just disable the password resetting for now. then after that figure out how to fix the issue.

I was already weary of Guild Wars 2 before this (macro-transactions), this isn't helping.

Where is the COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT? I mean this is a COMMUNITY issue.

Or any NCSoft product.

Should make a Poll.. Will you Buy Guild wars 2 if this isn't fixed swiftly and efficiently... and if something similar to this happens in Guild wars 2 can we trust that they will take care of it or just let it sit for a month or two like this?

Yes this is pretty worrying, even more worrying is the cover-up behind it.

I don't have any NCSoft games, thankfully lol.

EXACTLY.

But, this is Gaile. So maybe we should try to complain that we'd lose our beloved minipets if we get hacked?

She might just jump on it.

I'm surprised you can find a way to defend Anet in all this HOT MESS.

Intriguing.

Guys, I'm scared :( can we get a group hug?

Link please? All I'm seeing about this is from Gaile. All I've seen from Regina is about the hats.

Good point, the reason we have no management is because we never needed it before, what we need is someone to take the lead here gather up all the data.

What we need is exposure also the more of it the better, youtube videos, posting public places where this is going to get noticed by a larger majority, in game people posting links to this forum or other website, in game protests.

And right now is the PERFECT time to do all this, maximum exposure because a lot of people are in game, a lot of people are on there holidays etc, if ever there was a time to fire the bullet it would be now.

<----Runs....runs away she goes to never come back! O.o

New Gaile update (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...master_account):
EDIT: further down the page, on a request to at least temporarily close down the PlayNC website's access to accounts:

I logged into my NCSoft master account in mid-December after not having accessed it in more than a month. Imagine my surprise when I found a FIFTH Guild Wars game account listed in my master account when my household actually only has four Guild Wars accounts. Four accounts named: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

As I explained to support, what motivation would I have as a long term player to create a GW TRIAL account called [email protected] (sans the .com)?

So yes, it appears someone has accessed my NCSoft master account. No, my Guild Wars accounts have not been hacked... YET.

I had to provide all my keys to prove I owned the accounts just to get through this issue. Their response, in the end, was "We do not have any information as to why a trial account was created. There are no characters and no logins on the account. We are not able to delete game accounts, so just disregard that account at this time."

The problem is this: NCSoft dictates to their game development companies something like 'We will handle support issues for all games under the parent umbrella to consolidate support efforts, provide support efficiencies, eliminate duplicate resources and allow you to focus on the development of your respective properties instead of devoting resources to support. In order for us to provide that support you will have to a) provide your player database, b) cease making account changes to your player database (all changes will flow from us), and c) provide a way for us to funnel those changes back to you (in a standardized format). Further, we will take your databases and build a front end support website for the convenience of the player to access his individual game accounts. Etc., etc.'

In so doing, they bit off more than they could chew. More than they could handle, both from a support and a best-practices development perspective. Especially given the economic downturn of the last few years.

The carrot! I linked 4 accounts. One of them was not even mine, a friend went on hiatus and left me his account to use and I thought I was doing him a favor by getting him the storage pane.

Not possible. Learned this once I tried to give my friend his account back. He forever logs in now using one of MY email addresses and I'm the one that has to change the password on his account via my master account. Pretty messed up, good thing he wasn't mad about it.

Nevermind what you've lost. Nevermind their capabilities. It's not a matter of WANT. They don't have the manpower investigate and restore hacked accounts. It is far easier and cheaper for them to continue to blame the user and parrot their security advisories, despite a clearly broken system.

This is the only feasible option but only the third one will happen, if we're lucky. Number 1 definitely won't happen and the only way number 2 could happen is if they devise a way to prevent support cases from being displayed on the the NCSoft master account screen but still be preserved as history for the support staff. Right now I'm betting we have a window into their database so they can't allow us to delete.

In the meantime, if you have old/solved support tickets containing your IGN and/or game keys, you should absolutely change the password to the support section of the site so that viewing the case history requires a separate login from you master NCSoft account.

Yes, it was absolutely a trick to get Guild Wars users to consolidate under a master account and also to prevent users from passing accounts around by simply changing the email address.

The Hall of Monuments thing was undoubtedly a way for ANet to attempt to maintain customer loyalty because of their longer-than-anticipated development for Guild Wars 2. However, the HoM does imply some player database linkage between GW1 and GW2, and I for one, will be very concerned how that is handled... if I even bother to play GW2 since I'm currently in the waiting-to-be-hacked mode because of my mysteriously compromised master account security. Changing my master and game account passwords multiple times hasn't made me feel any better.