Friday, May 8, 2009

System Breached?

On every MMORPG the word hack or being hacked is widely used and It sinks to this idea when a certain account was used by someone and the in-game items are lost then speculation arise the transfer said items to another account. Most common incidents are; when a Key Logger was installed in a PC, Spyware are installed, a person peeked on a player while entering their user name and password, and so on with the same manner. Worst case scenarios like deletion of character may result after the hack was successfully executed. And for the victim, he/she will become more frustrated because of the time and money spent.

Recently some member of our faction logged her decoy account because the santossuarez account suddenly has a different password after several minutes. So it leads to logging her decoy account and informed me about the situation but during that time we don't think it that way.

Next was the Shadowstein account. Two weeks ago during the morning around 10:00 AM, his account suddenly logged out then they thought it was just a simple server disconnection. But I sent a message in his YM that why he disconnected in the middle of farming. Then he logged back, there he found a different set of characters. He started to pick the main characters which are two Musketeers and a Bernelli. Then he found out the equipments were all missing. So he decided to return the loaned items to us and changed his account password because of the suspected hack in his account. We all thought it was over but still we are worried about this. In the afternoon around 2:00 PM his account logged out again, his younger brother didn't notice it and after several minutes when he came back he tried to log it in again and the password already changed along with its GE passport in the official site. The fellow faction members was also surprised because they told me the Shadowstein account left the faction. In the end, the owner of the account sent a ticket to IAH but til now there is no progress about the incident. For now he is worried about the retrieval of the account because it might cost him some money which he cannot afford.

After the Shadowstein incident his brother with in-game name †Royals† suffer the same fate but this time the hacker only chooses the costumes and some elites that the faction spared to him. Then the brothers consulted me about the incident through the messenger but I've told them to write IAH for report ticket so they could do action to this matter.

Then a day after the †Royals† hack incident, their dummy account AlexanDerson suffer the same fate though it is far grim because the hacker left a message through his barracks and it read from left to right barracks under the level 1 fighter characters "YOU joatic BEEN QUITGENOW HACKED AGAIN".

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Okay it may sound really tough for the four accounts mentioned above but here are the points I want to stress before this incidents happened which directly came from their testimonials. [1] These players play only in their own houses. [2] The common amongst the players are they received an empty e-mail regarding Granado Espada.

In this article, its a clear that the hacker track all the necessary information to the extent of changing the password and all in the GE passport site. Then the interesting part about this hacker is that he knows what to pick on player's account. In my personal opinion the victims for now are not much of a player in game and I see that the hacker is doing some experiments so if he/she performs it to hard core player accounts things will be more easier.

To all the pioneers and IAH people who might read this. You might have different opinions about the series of incident mentioned above the paragraph. But there is one sure thing about this - the matter is serious! They all sent a ticket to IAH but still there is no progress about the incident. We also suggest them to do some reformatting on their PC to clean up nasty program if there such exist. Personally I hope that they could resolve this matter but the victims are worried because it means $$$ for retrieving if we heard it right. And these guys don't have the $$$ to get it back just in case a tiny light will lit for their account's hope. For now my fellow Filipino player inside the faction speculates the empty email, with enclosed Granado Espada as title, sent to these players somehow used as portal to hack their PC at home were they respectively play. May this article serve as warning to our fellow pioneers who plays the game to be more extra careful! I got high hopes that IAH will help the four accounts mentioned above and others cases that is not written here. Til again I'll keep you posted pioneers!

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