World of Warcraft strikes back against game-related cybercrime

Blizzard, the company behind the popular online role-playing game “World of Warcraft”, has announced that it is producing a hardware token device to help protect its gamers against cybercriminals.

In a trick nabbed from an increasing number of online banks, Blizzard is fighting back against hackers who have feasted upon game players on poorly protected PCs in the past by introducing a small hardware device that produces a one-time six-digit number that can be entered at login alongside the user’s regular username and password.

Even if keyboard logging spyware has infected the PC and can grab the username and password it won’t find the random number very useful as it expires within a couple of minutes.

What has become clear in recent years is that hackers are actively trying to steal from players of online MMORPGs, whether it be “cyber-money”, spells or armoury that they…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.

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