After what could politely be referred to as a rocky start seemed to be put in the past, it’s clear Diablo III is still being targeted by real-world plunderers. This time the issue isn’t surrounding online access, but the all-too-common occurrence of another round of account hacking.
When Diablo III launched last week, it was sick – infected with server shutdowns, and a game-breaking bug that blocked players out of Battle.net (to which a constant connection is required for play) right out of the gate.
Blizzard attempted to remedy the situation by simultaneously issuing an apology and boarding up their auction house, even offering players free Batteltag changes – and for a while the palliatives seemed to be setting the decade-awaited dungeon crawler on the right track. But they’re not out of the woods yet.
An alarming number of players on the Diablo III forums seem to be reporting that their accounts have been hacked, and thoroughly plundered of gold and inventory. Eurogamer confirmed the situation when one of their own fell prey and saw control of his account transferred to an unsolicited user.
According to the victims (and they’re piling up fast) Blizzard has, again, turned to damage control, this time by “rolling back” accounts. Such a scenario would involve players having their character reset to a pre-hack time period: some progress might be lost, but at least control can be restored to its proper owner.
Last week’s launch hiccups were embarrassing enough – we suspect that, at this point, Blizzard is starting to believe in the curses some associate with producing a game named ‘Diablo.‘ In any case, they issued a brief response via the game’s official forums:
“We are very aware of these reports and are taking them very seriously. Please keep an eye on the General Discussion forums as Community members will be posting something soon.”
Unfortunately for the hapless Diablo III owners (some of whom, by now, might be flirting with the 30 or 40 hour mark on their painstakingly handcrafted characters) no one – not even Blizzard, it seems – knows how the accounts are being hacked or how to protect them. Blizzard sells account “Authenticators” that are designed to provide an extra layer of security for customers, but even its owners are reporting identity compromises. Some believe that the uptick in hacking reports suspiciously coincides with Sunday’s European server shutdown after an SQL injection attack. Others speak of hackers being able to steal session identifiers – thus unlocking vital account information and proceeding with the thieving.
It’s beyond perplexing to see a company like Blizzard, developer of the ubiquitous MMO World of Warcraft, struggle so mightily in launching a game after 10+ years of development. And just when we thought the worst was behind us, it seems like it might only now be arriving (just ask Sony how terrifying the implications of hacking can be).
The extent of the damage and danger remains unclear, but as surreal as it sounds, don’t be surprised to hear rumblings of a shutdown or a brief PSN-esque outage until Blizzard can guarantee the safety of its customers.
Ranters, have you or any of your peers fallen victim to a D3 hacking. How serious can the implications be for Blizzard – especially after an already-tumultuous Diablo III launch?
Diablo III is now available for the PC and Mac.
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Source: Diablo III Forums [via Eurogamer]
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Where there is RL money involved, rest assured there will be eager hackers. While the real money AH hasn’t gone up yet, I’m sure 3rd party sites are busily selling off all their ill gotten phat lootz to desperate people.
The funny thing is, once the real money AH goes live, it won’t remove that allure since now all hackers will do is re-sell your stuff on Blizzard’s own site (take SS of your highly prized uniques/rares because chances are only you will have that exact group of random abilities). Not to mention having the accompanying paypal accounts to plunder for actual cash.
What’s even more sad is that a company that is literally rolling in billions of excess revenue can’t keep hackers out of their systems. So glad I decided to wait.
Same here. IF Bliz will ever let me play stand-a-lone like D1 and D2… then I would be more than happy to purchase D3! Being ‘ON’ their Servers is a risk that is not worth taking and there was really no reason, aside from money-grubbing, to build it on a platform where I had to be connected all the time. It’s NOT what I wanted the game for so I’m more that happy that I haven’t purchased the game yet. Probably won’t until there is some other ‘hack’ or bypass’ that will let me have a great game experiencee without using my bnandwidth to stay connected.
Until the hack comes…. All the best! ~ Stark
No different than having a WoW account hacked. Get an authenticator and the problem is solved.
Next up, Blizzard’s authentication system is hacked…
” Blizzard sells account “Authenticators” that are designed to provide an extra layer of security for customers, but even its owners are reporting identity compromises”
If you click the link in that phrase you’d notice that the thread is closed with a moderator saying they didn’t have an authentication device attached to their account before they got hacked.
Everybody Lies. ~Gregory House
If you can believe that these are hacks on the actual server rather than of a persons account then its also not hard to believe they one could delete the record of them having an authenticator.
The authenticator is really not as secure as blizzard or its community makes it out to be and many people with them get hacked all the time and the response of blizzard and the community is always its their fault. Authenticator or not blizzard has some blame in this and if it is truly within their servers then the entire blame is on blizzard.
Please excuse my lack of technical know-how here, but where it says,
“Some believe that the uptick in hacking reports suspiciously coincides with Sunday’s European server shutdown after an SQL injection attack. Others speak of hackers being able to steal session identifiers – thus unlocking vital account information and proceeding with the thieving.”
Are they implying that Blizzard’s servers have been hacked and THAT is why this is happening…because if that is the case we are talking a whole different type of demon, no pun intended.
People are f*cking douche bags. But I also blame Blizzard for not being on top of things, especially since they are one of the biggest gameing companies out there and how they have so much experience. This is ridiculous and pathetic.
yeah they’ve totally been working on this game for the last 5 plus years hahah what a joke, s*** like this shouldn’t even exist in very popular (and ugly looking) mmo’s, their fault for having s*** networkers code everything to ensure maximum security, not mine for having a legit copy of the game, going through all required procedures to play and minding my own business.
yet people will still buy from these a**holes b/c they’re to f***ing stupid to boycott rejects that aren’t willing to provide maximum security for the very people that give them cash >:(
So the always connected is to stop cheaters right? Blizzard is doing a bang up job.
This is what you get when you take ridiculous decisions, like making a solo game playable online only.
WOW….JUST WOW…..such incredible dis-information. Mr. Sipple should be ashamed of publishing such drivel.
“When Diablo III launched last week, it was sick – infected with server shutdowns, and a game-breaking bug that blocked players out of Battle.net (to which a constant connection is required for play) right out of the gate.”………..Yup, it was a very shaky launch, we all know that, BUT one would expect some issues with a game of this unprecedented magnitude, and the vast majority of issues were ironed out by mid day of day 2. The game has been rock solid for the vast majority of us since day 3.
“An alarming number of players on the Diablo III forums seem to be reporting that their accounts have been hacked, and thoroughly plundered of gold and inventory. “……Really dude? You are using the forums as your source???? really? Wow. You must be new to gaming forums, so I will clue you in…..people HUGELY exaggerate on forums, and the vast majority of posts are blatant trolls. Dont get me wrong, they can be rather entertaining, but used as a source for data? Again, another WOW as to the competence (or lack thereof) of this author.
“The extent of the damage and danger remains unclear, but as surreal as it sounds, don’t be surprised to hear rumblings of a shutdown or a brief PSN-esque outage until Blizzard can guarantee the safety of its customers.”…..again, your information is coming from some random forum trolls. Let me once again clue you in….people get hacked out of their OWN stupidity. Blizz servers have NOT been compromised in any way. If you get hacked, it is 100% your own fault. Learn to secure your computer.
I would LOVE for you to explain to everyone how getting hacked is anyone’s fault and exactly how securing your computer factors into the equation considering all the hacked info is on Blizzard’s servers.
Can’t wait for that smart ass to get hacked.
tbone a message for you.
I was indeed hacked, I do my online backing, paypal, and loginto my business adwords account on a regular basis. Somebody who I don’t know appeared on my recently played with list and an hour later I got booted from a server, re-joined and got booted again 5 minutes later. A third time logging in my username and password did not match.
Strangely this was a few hours after the EU servers went down for a number of hours and reports are telling of two possibilities a SQL hack or a session ID dupe issue. Now this would put my account at risk because my username and password do not change but with an Authenticator the hacker would still need the additional unique rolling ID which they cant bypass.
So yes, Blizz servers have been compromised, no I am not a troll, I am lucky my character was only level 13 with about 20k gold (which they kindly stole) servers get hacked all the time, search “Rift hacked” or “PSN hacked” or even “diablo 3 hacked”.
F### people… Always a group of assholes trying to ruin everyones fun, and sometimes lives just because they can read computer scripts like its their first language.
The account compromises are not from a hack on blizzards servers.
The game is online-always because it allows for better features and less chance of hacking (once kinks are ironed out).
Anyone who would rather the game have been standalone don’t understand technology, progress, or intelligence.
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