Post by Allana on Aug 15, 2012 6:11:06 GMT -8
"What kind of world do we live in where a man would take another man's battle ostrich?" - Sheldon Cooper, Big Bang Theory
Blizzard's Battlenet was hacked, and the encrypted versions of security questions and passwords were accessed. Blizzard says that the passwords were extracted in their encrypted form, so will have to be cracked individually if at all.
Also accessed in the attack was the list of North American email addresses, from which I think Blizzard sends its bulk mailings. Phishing is common with Battlenet accounts, but if you haven't been bombarded by the phishing attempst before DO NOT TRUST EMAILS from Blizzard, and do not follow hyperlinks given in their mails. There are ways to fake headers so they appear to come from an official source. Always go to Blizzard sites directly, through launchers or trusted bookmarks. (I'm adding in some info from their support page below to help detect fraudulent emails.)
This is not limited to just World of Warcraft players, if you have any Battle.Net accounts you should reset your information. This includes Diablo and Starcraft accounts on Battlenet.
This is the press release Blizzard released regarding the incident:
Official Source: us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html
SPOOFED EMAIL FROM DESTINATIONS:
Emails can appear to be from a destination other than the one they actually originated from. Using this means phishing mails can make it appear that your mail actually came from Blizzard.com, most email services have methods of seeing through this, but you have to "view full header" on your emails to see it.
This is Blizzards WOW support page on avoiding phishing: us.battle.net/support/en/article/phishing
This is the snippet directly pertaining to the spoofing of the mail address:
Blizzard's Battlenet was hacked, and the encrypted versions of security questions and passwords were accessed. Blizzard says that the passwords were extracted in their encrypted form, so will have to be cracked individually if at all.
Also accessed in the attack was the list of North American email addresses, from which I think Blizzard sends its bulk mailings. Phishing is common with Battlenet accounts, but if you haven't been bombarded by the phishing attempst before DO NOT TRUST EMAILS from Blizzard, and do not follow hyperlinks given in their mails. There are ways to fake headers so they appear to come from an official source. Always go to Blizzard sites directly, through launchers or trusted bookmarks. (I'm adding in some info from their support page below to help detect fraudulent emails.)
This is not limited to just World of Warcraft players, if you have any Battle.Net accounts you should reset your information. This includes Diablo and Starcraft accounts on Battlenet.
This is the press release Blizzard released regarding the incident:
Players and Friends,
Even when you are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun. This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.
At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.
Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts.
We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password. Please click this link to change your password. Moreover, if you have used the same or similar passwords for other purposes, you may want to consider changing those passwords as well.
In the coming days, we'll be prompting players on North American servers to change their secret questions and answers through an automated process. Additionally, we'll prompt mobile authenticator users to update their authenticator software. As a reminder, phishing emails will ask you for password or login information. Blizzard Entertainment emails will never ask for your password. We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of you and understand you may have questions. Please find additional information here.
We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.
Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
Even when you are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun. This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.
At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.
Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts.
We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password. Please click this link to change your password. Moreover, if you have used the same or similar passwords for other purposes, you may want to consider changing those passwords as well.
In the coming days, we'll be prompting players on North American servers to change their secret questions and answers through an automated process. Additionally, we'll prompt mobile authenticator users to update their authenticator software. As a reminder, phishing emails will ask you for password or login information. Blizzard Entertainment emails will never ask for your password. We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of you and understand you may have questions. Please find additional information here.
We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.
Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
Official Source: us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html
SPOOFED EMAIL FROM DESTINATIONS:
Emails can appear to be from a destination other than the one they actually originated from. Using this means phishing mails can make it appear that your mail actually came from Blizzard.com, most email services have methods of seeing through this, but you have to "view full header" on your emails to see it.
This is Blizzards WOW support page on avoiding phishing: us.battle.net/support/en/article/phishing
This is the snippet directly pertaining to the spoofing of the mail address:
"Spoofed" Email Addresses
Even if you receive an email from an @blizzard.com or @battle.net address, it's still important to remain cautious, as it is possible to change how a sending address appears in the "From" field of an email. The process is known as "spoofing" and may cause a phishing email to initially look like it's been sent by Blizzard Entertainment. To determine the actual sending address of an email, you will need to check the email's header information.
Most online email clients and applications will allow you to view an email's header. Please see your email provider's documentation to determine how to view email headers. A legitimate email header from Blizzard Entertainment should look something like this:
X-SID-PRA noreply@blizzard.com
or
Return-Path: < noreply@blizzard.com >
Received: from smtp01.worldofwarcraft.com ([XX.XXX.XXX.XXX]) by…
Received: from … by smtp01.worldofwarcraft.com …
for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:46:05 GMT
From: noreply@blizzard.com
To: Your Email Address
Additional details regarding how to locate header information using some of the more common applications and web-based e-mail providers can also be found on Gmail's Message Headers page.
Even if you receive an email from an @blizzard.com or @battle.net address, it's still important to remain cautious, as it is possible to change how a sending address appears in the "From" field of an email. The process is known as "spoofing" and may cause a phishing email to initially look like it's been sent by Blizzard Entertainment. To determine the actual sending address of an email, you will need to check the email's header information.
Most online email clients and applications will allow you to view an email's header. Please see your email provider's documentation to determine how to view email headers. A legitimate email header from Blizzard Entertainment should look something like this:
X-SID-PRA noreply@blizzard.com
or
Return-Path: < noreply@blizzard.com >
Received: from smtp01.worldofwarcraft.com ([XX.XXX.XXX.XXX]) by…
Received: from … by smtp01.worldofwarcraft.com …
for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:46:05 GMT
From: noreply@blizzard.com
To: Your Email Address
Additional details regarding how to locate header information using some of the more common applications and web-based e-mail providers can also be found on Gmail's Message Headers page.
