WoW bans/closes 76,000 accounts

[Raolinx Aeromancer]

I have to give credit where it is due and Blizzard recently closed 76,000 accounts and Removed 11 million in gold from there servers. Here is there official release.

"In our continued efforts to combat cheating in World of Warcraft, more than 76,000 accounts were closed and 11 million gold was removed from the game economies in Europe, Korea, and the US in the month of September. The closed accounts were associated with activities that violate World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, such as using third-party programs that allow cheating, and farming gold and items. These types of activities can severely impact the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players.

We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating. Please note that selling World of Warcraft content, such as gold, items, and characters, can result in a permanent ban of the involved accounts from World of Warcraft.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips reported to our GMs in game or emailed to our Hacks Team by legitimate World of Warcraft players. If you suspect that a World of Warcraft player is using an illegal third-party program to farm gold or items, or is otherwise violating our Terms of Use, please report the suspected infraction via one of the means listed above. All reports will be investigated, and those that prove false will not result in corrective action.

As always, thank you for your continued support, and best of luck with your continued adventures in Azeroth!"

This banning follows previous bans in June and in May. 30,000 were banned in may.

As part of our efforts to eliminate cheating from World of Warcraft, we recently banned approximately 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts in the month of June, and with that removed well over 22 million gold from the total economy across all realms. While we regret having to take such extreme action, these accounts were participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft’s Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items. Such behavior not only negatively impacts the economy of a realm, it diminishes the achievements of those who play legitimately. We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and our players from the harmful effects of cheating.

How do they know? Well the following article was released last year. Who knows if the following information is true or was true at the time. Most of the Links in the story are no longer working.

Bruce Schneier
October 13, 2005
Blizzard Entertainment Uses Spyware to Verify EULA Compliance


Scary:

I recently performed a rather long reversing session on a piece of software written by Blizzard Entertainment, yes -- the ones who made Warcraft, and World of Warcraft (which has 4.5 million+ players now, apparently). This software is known as the 'warden client' -- its written like shellcode in that it's position independent. It is downloaded on the fly from Blizzard's servers, and it runs about every 15 seconds. It is one of the most interesting pieces of spyware to date, because it is designed only to verify compliance with a EULA/TOS. Here is what it does, about every 15 seconds, to about 4.5 million people (500,000 of which are logged on at any given time):
The warden dumps all the DLL's using a ToolHelp API call. It reads information from every DLL loaded in the 'world of warcraft' executable process space. No big deal.

The warden then uses the GetWindowTextA function to read the window text in the titlebar of every window. These are windows that are not in the WoW process, but any program running on your computer. Now a Big Deal.

I watched the warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, the URL of several websites that I had open at the time, and the names of all my running programs, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time.

Once these strings are obtained, they are passed through a hashing function and compared against a list of 'banning hashes' -- if you match something in their list, I suspect you will get banned. ...

Next, warden opens every process running on your computer. ... I watched warden open my email program, and even my PGP key manager. Again, I feel this is a fairly severe violation of privacy, but what can you do? It would be very easy to devise a test where the warden clearly reads confidential or personal information without regard.

This behavior places the warden client squarely in the category of spyware. What is interesting about this is that it might be the first use of spyware to verify compliance with a EULA. I cannot imagine that such practices will be legal in the future, but right now in terms of law, this is the wild wild west. You can't blame Blizz for trying, as well as any other company, but this practice will have to stop if we have any hope of privacy. Agree w/ botting or game cheaters or not, this is a much larger issue called 'privacy' and Blizz has no right to be opening my excel or PGP programs, for whatever reason.

Now after reading this would you mind if Sigil added spyware to Vanguard to sniff out third party programs?

I believe I would if all of Bruce's facts were true. I wouldn't mind a siffter looking at all my running process' as long as it didn't look IN my email or data programs like Excel, or even Text programs like Word. They should never look into Financial programs like quicken. There should be a master list of what CAN be looked at IE specific programs known to be used to hack into the client.

I'm not concerned with third party logging programs just programs used to actively cheat in game. Like macroquest is used in Everquest.

Lets see what you folks think.

Rao

[Mobius]

Well I'm against spyware that will look into any kind of financial progs as well, and I'm also against it looking up my web history and reading my email, you never know who you my get a spam from and it goes KOS on you because it thinks you're sleeping with the enemy. This warden system is pretty scary to tell the truth.

[Pirotess]

Im completely against any type of spyware software being used regardless of how well intentioned the company putting it there is. I'd like to see them put more effort into securing their systems so hacks/bots/cheats cant be used from the client instead of figuring out how to invade my machine.

[Raolinx Aeromancer]

Well The Warden program really only checks for known hacks and reads the text strings in title bars. It does have the potential to do more but at this time this is all that it does.

Blizzard cancled 400,000 accounts in 2003 alone. I have to run to work so I can't really dig up what they did in 04, 05, and so far this year.

Rao

[Naurki]

I would not like it one bit, I already have a hard enough time keeping my machine protected from all the crap you encounter on a daily basis from everything on the net, let alone my vid game subscription doing this to me.

Well The Warden program really only checks for known hacks and reads the text strings in title bars. It does have the potential to do more but at this time this is all that it does.

No offense meant to you or anything Rao, but thats as far as you know, it only takes one person that is corrupt with clearance and the knowledge to do anything bad and it will be done, probably already has been and its just not been figured out yet.

Sigil, just say no to this type of invasion, handle your business server side and stay out of my machine!

[Wakygreek]

Originally Posted by Raolinx Aeromancer

I have to give credit where it is due and Blizzard recently closed 76,000 accounts and Removed 11 million in gold from there servers. Here is there official release.




This banning follows previous bans in June and in May. 30,000 were banned in may.





How do they know? Well the following article was released last year. Who knows if the following information is true or was true at the time. Most of the Links in the story are no longer working.




Now after reading this would you mind if Sigil added spyware to Vanguard to sniff out third party programs?

I believe I would if all of Bruce's facts were true. I wouldn't mind a siffter looking at all my running process' as long as it didn't look IN my email or data programs like Excel, or even Text programs like Word. They should never look into Financial programs like quicken. There should be a master list of what CAN be looked at IE specific programs known to be used to hack into the client.

I'm not concerned with third party logging programs just programs used to actively cheat in game. Like macroquest is used in Everquest.

Lets see what you folks think.

Rao

Ok, yes i think they should be able to use it to sniff out cheaters. As long as were aware that it exists and it is there, just make sure that you have no program that has personal information running when your playing wow...how long does it take to open a program on a computer that has the power to run a next gen mmo or a mmo in general? Im sorry but i played wow and the economy went to hell when there were a bunch of gold farmers it ruined the game and the market to say nothing of the auction house. If this cant be used due to legal issues, then create a program or a safeguard that checks what is being run in the background. Im sorry but if you have your personal information up while running any program that connects to a specific source then you must be indeed new to computers...thats one of the biggest no no's.

[Pirotess]

Originally Posted by Wakygreek

Ok, yes i think they should be able to use it to sniff out cheaters. As long as were aware that it exists and it is there, just make sure that you have no program that has personal information running when your playing wow...how long does it take to open a program on a computer that has the power to run a next gen mmo or a mmo in general? Im sorry but i played wow and the economy went to hell when there were a bunch of gold farmers it ruined the game and the market to say nothing of the auction house. If this cant be used due to legal issues, then create a program or a safeguard that checks what is being run in the background. Im sorry but if you have your personal information up while running any program that connects to a specific source then you must be indeed new to computers...thats one of the biggest no no's.

Warden type programs are just going to continue to evolve if consumers allow them at all. How long will it be before it just scans your entire computer or hooks into Windows Desktop Search and suddenly your personal info that wasnt running at the time you loaded the game is vulnerable.

[Arctic_Slicer]

Originally Posted by World of Warcraft: Terms of Service

14. Acknowledgments.

You hereby acknowledge and agree that:

A. WHEN RUNNING, THE PROGRAM MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) AND/OR CPU PROCESSES FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH WORLD OF WARCRAFT. AN "UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM" AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY "ADDON" OR "MOD," THAT IN BLIZZARD'S SOLE DETERMINATION: (i) ENABLES OR FACILITATES CHEATING OF ANY TYPE; (ii) ALLOWS USERS TO MODIFY OR HACK THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY BLIZZARD; OR (iii) INTERCEPTS, "MINES," OR OTHERWISE COLLECTS INFORMATION FROM OR THROUGH THE PROGRAM. IN THE EVENT THAT THE PROGRAM DETECTS AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM, BLIZZARD MAY (a) COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM WAS DETECTED; AND/OR (b) EXERCISE ANY OR ALL OF ITS RIGHTS UNDER SECTION 6 OF THIS AGREEMENT, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE TO THE USER.

B. WHEN THE PROGRAM IS RUNNING, BLIZZARD MAY OBTAIN CERTAIN IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR COMPUTER AND ITS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR HARD DRIVES, CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT, IP ADDRESS(ES) AND OPERATING SYSTEM(S), FOR PURPOSES OF IMPROVING THE PROGRAM AND/OR THE SERVICE, AND TO POLICE AND ENFORCE THE PROVISIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT AND THE EULA.

They tell you exactly what the program does in the Terms of Service you agreed to when you signed up for an account. The program only runs when "World of Warcraft" runs and the it only sends information back to Blizzard at times when such a process is detected. If you are not running any blacklisted programs no information will be collected by Blizzard. This clause has always been in the ToS.

You guys act like they are being dishonest about it or that they are using it for some malicious purpose. The program's sole purpose is to maintain the integrity of the game and prevent the true malicious people from ruining the expirience for all. Like it or not such programs are a neccesary evil and it's really a shame that a few vocal idiots scare more companies from using such programs.

Honestly you should be more worried about the people who handle your credit card information as there is a far larger chance for that to get into the wrong hands.

[Mikis]

I agree. I don't have any problems as long as they use the information to do what it is supposed to do - stop cheaters/hackers/bots and so on. I trust Blizzard enough to keep to doing that and therefore I prefer a little program like that over having 300k more chinese farmers

[Pirotess]

Originally Posted by Arctic_Slicer

They tell you exactly what the program does in the Terms of Service you agreed to when you signed up for an account. The program only runs when "World of Warcraft" runs and the it only sends information back to Blizzard at times when such a process is detected. If you are not running any blacklisted programs no information will be collected by Blizzard. This clause has always been in the ToS.

You guys act like they are being dishonest about it or that they are using it for some malicious purpose. The program's sole purpose is to maintain the integrity of the game and prevent the true malicious people from ruining the expirience for all. Like it or not such programs are a neccesary evil and it's really a shame that a few vocal idiots scare more companies from using such programs.

Honestly you should be more worried about the people who handle your credit card information as there is a far larger chance for that to get into the wrong hands.

Thats not the point Arctic_Slicer. I think you're being a little too trusting of how companies operate or why they do what they do. For example how does Blizzard know what is a blacklisted program and what is not a blacklisted program? They have to check your process lists and compare the executables on them to their known list of exploits. That list grows daily though so now they not only have to check that list against their known list but they also have to figure out what the unknown programs on your process lists are as well. Starting to get a little questionable at that point eh?

I think everyone can agree that companies are NOT always shining examples of good and thats why we're concerned about them being dishonest and malicious. Anyone remember a certain rootkit distributed by Sony not so long ago? Thats the kind of stuff that people are worried about and when it comes down to it, things like Blizzards warden program are just a hairs breath from datamining just about any information they want from your computer whether they tell you they are doing it or not. Can you imagine how beneficial it would be for them to know certain things about your computer so they could explicitly design content that harnesses it? Or maybe they'd like to sell some information to a sister company so they could have a successful solicitation program with a similar product. The temptations are certainly real and its happened often enough that its not unheard of.

Bottom line I dont feel its idiotic to be concerned about our right to privacy, you should be too.