Is it just me or are more people getting hacked nowadays?

Hi everyone,

Just thought I'd pose the question to the guru community - do people find that more and more players are getting hacked nowadays? I only bring it up because it happened to me recently after years of not being hacked and after looking at various forums online it seems to me that hacking is becoming more frequent.

I hope anet introduce better security for accounts for gw2, I know you can change passwords frequently which helps, but it would still be nice if there was some other layer(s) of security, perhaps not to the same extent but like you may get with online banking/shopping.

W!ck3dS!ck

P.S. Hope I've posted this in the right place, sorry to the moderators if I haven't I'm new to the guru community.

I got hacked about a year ago. Lost all my stuff, but caught them before they deleted my chars.

I have heard about people being hacked all the time I have played GW, but mainly from 3rd party programmes in the earlier years, these days it seems anyone can get hacked, because I can guarantee, I as the only person that knew my log in details, and never used any 3rd party programmes, changed my pw every month, and then it just happens out of the blue.

Not impressed, but not alot you can do about it, apart from contact support.

Same here, would have been gutted if they had deleted my chars.

Yeah anet told me I got hacked by gold scammers, apparently I may have been hacked via a keylogger (think its called that) which I don't really understand but it made me paranoid about the rest of my computer shizz.

Yeah it sucks, I understand why they can't return your stuff, but like I say would be nice if there was some sort of other safety net in place.

Account hacks run in cycles. What happens is hackers accumulate large quantities of information and then resell that information in bulk packages of associated information to more serious computer criminals. Shortly after a package moves, you're going to see hack reports.

Hacking in general has become a much bigger business. A lot of international jurisdictions cannot or will not expend the resources to enforce computer crime laws, and people living in those jurisdictions more or less have free license to make money via hacking as they please.

ANet and NCSoft would like you to believe that getting hacked is your own fault. Either you got keylogged, or you credential shared, or you got attacked by someone profiling you using social media (such as Facebook and, well, this forum), or you used a weak password, or some combination of the above. They're probably right in the vast majority of cases when it comes to the normal background noise hacking that we've come to expect.

If you see the community come out with pitchforks and torches as happened late in 2009 (due to the marked increase in volume and the frequency of hacks through NCSoft accounts), there's probably something to the argument that there's a security vulnerability on the developer's end. Should something like that happen again, you'll never get an admission. ANet makes the rules on their playground, and at the very least an admission would imply a moral responsibility to do something about the problem.

By contrast, online banking gets held to a very strict and obvious legal standard. That means that banks expend a lot more resources protecting their bottom line from the fallout of a mass hacker intrusion than a company like ANet does. Having an online banking system badly compromised would result in both restitution to the account holders and depositors taking their money elsewhere, and asset-starved banks just can't have that. So they invest resources in providing sufficient security to redirect would-be cybercriminals to easier targets.

Online shopping is a different animal, but suffice it to say that the largest online retailers will rapidly cease to be such if they fail to provide top-notch account security. Smaller, marginal operators generally aren't as secure because they just don't have the resources.

It's a little early to start theorizing that there's something unusually sinister going on. If you start seeing "I got hacked!" threads popping up faster than the mods can close them, that's a strong signal that something new is happening.

I have an odd hacking story, I got hacked, my account was banned because of "unauthorized use" and when ANet restored my account(quite a pain in the arse) I had almost a stack of ecto, 400k and +20 black dyes in my inventory.

I was still pissed my acct got hacked, but couldn't help laughing a little

Haha this sounds like the 'Dear Hacker' thread that started up recently, does make me feel better that sometimes it backfires and the account holder can actually reap the rewards of being hacked :P

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@Martin Alvito

Wow you know your stuff :P
Yeah it would be nice if games could maybe begin to have increased security though. Ok I guess its not real money you are losing like with banking or shopping online but you do effectively end up feeling like you have wasted your own time working hard to get items/weapons/armour etc.

Yes, because there's more money to be made selling ectos in the real world than hacking for illegal credit cards purchases...

/rollseyes

Seriously, do you think a "serious criminal" is going to bother with trying to fence five bucks of ectos when they can more easily steal a credit card number and buy a $2,000 plasma TV?

I don't have any issue with the rest of your statements, and very much agree that serious hacking by serious criminals is a serious issue. But to say that they are going to bother with virtual property in a video game is just ludicrous. It takes too much time, and too much effort, and yields too little profit.

As noted already, I think we've had periods of times when hacking activity seemed higher.

I think there are just a lot of people coming back to the game now in anticipation of GW2 and finding their accounts have been hacked. Who knows when the account was actually compromised.

That's a very good point actually (Y) I found that mine had been hacked after a fair bit of time being inactive.

I agree. It had been several months (well, probably over a year) since I last dropped into GW, but reading about GW2 got me interested in playing again. That's when I found my account hacked, too.

I believe there's not really an increase of account hacking, its just more people are finding out that their account(s) got hacked. As GW2 hype increases, people start coming back from years of not playing. Their accounts could have been hacked yesterday or 3 years ago, and they don't find out until they try to log in.

Also, there are a lot more new players in the game that are joining because of GW2 hype. New players may not be as keen to phishing attempts as the rest of us. And there is likely a small number who want to catch up to older players and try to buy GW gold and ectos from illegal sites and then the creators of those sites use information given to them to hack the account(s).

lets not forget that 50/50 acc go for 200-300 $ these days i have a friend who sold one of his secondary acc for 300$ 50/50 off-course.

The poster above me doesn't seem to know that can be ban-able o-o

90% of accounts that get hacked are done by people in Asian countries. Virtual currency and goods trading has become quite the lucrative business over the years for them, most likely because they live in impoverished areas. This gives them a reason to try every possible means to get your account info, your rare weapons and minipets = food for their family. Unfortunately gaming companies can't do much since the hackers are outside their jurisdiction. It is incredibly surprising though that companies like NCsoft have such lax security because their security flaws could lose them a lot of potential business. I remember a scare not too long ago about a huge flaw in the NCMA mainframe that swapped people from their account to someone else upon logging in. Lets pray GW2 is a different story and that NCsoft took a lesson from the tragedy that is Sony's security.

I uninstalled GWs for 2 years because I went to raid in WoW. When I came back my account was perfectly fine. It makes me wonder if being a cautious gamer does any good at all.

Not worth it in America/Europe, for the amount of time invested, but well-worth it for those in any impoverished country. $300 is a heck of a lot - my girlfriend is from another country, and $400 was a month's wages @ 40-60 hours of work a week. And it was a good, well-paying job by the standards of the country, and her country is doing well by African/South American standards.

I imagine it's quite lucrative for any with internet access.

Hmm, I have two 50/50 GWAMM accounts.

Ah well, $600 doesn't nearly cover the hours spent .

@ Martin

Agreed 100% with regard to NCSoft/a-net and the causes of account theft.

Disagreed as to the banks. Their security is just as bad, possibly worse. (Just one recent example: link) It's just that they have smarter thieves who do a better job of not being detected (they tend to steal small amounts repeatedly) and the banks do a better job of staying silent when it happens. (Also, there's no "citibankguru" for members of their online services to get together and compare experiences and complain.)

I've been playing Rift and there was a lot of hacking going on, but after the developers put in a 'coin lock', there have been less complaints.

How it works is if you don't log in from your regular IP addy (say I take my laptop to the coffee shop), you get a coin lock on your account and an email is sent to the email address you registered with your account. You have to go to your email, get the unlock code and enter it when you log in. Only then can you access your bank account. It's a pain, but I appreciate the extra security.

Now obviously this won't work if the hacker has your email password as well, but if you're paranoid like I am, I keep an email account that I only use for sensitive things such as paypal or Anet or Rift. It's never ever used as a general email account.

friend got hacked a week ago, and sent 100's of tickets with all cd codes etc in, they ROLLED back his account then closed the accounts involved, according to arenanet it happened after he did a "great deal" on ectos for 50k. 19 ectos for 50k...and my bud has a great nack at deals. soon after he did the trade said ty etc, 2 mins later, account kicked him off for being on another pc.

but i think they are starting to ANTI grief player accounts within reason

I got hacked sometime in the last few weeks, I noticed it just yesterday. My account was permabanned for engaging in gold selling or something.

I sent a ticket to support, only to receive a neutral unhelpful response that I apparently sold gold and items or/and botted for real money. I sent another ticket a little more aggressively in tone and my account was unbanned a few hours later.

When I logged in, all my characters were naked, everything was gone except customized and quest items.

.. yay, I'm more poor than a noob now.