Beware teh Hackrz

A few weeks ago, one of our healers had his account hacked. Thankfully, after about a week, Blizzard restored his character, items, enchants...everything except his non-combat pets...which I restored.

Last night, I checked our forums and one of our Shadow Priests reported that his account had been hacked. :'( He has contacted Blizzard and is awaiting his outcome. Hopefully it will be as good as our Healer's.

Then, when checking the boards this morning, another or our members reported that he just tried to log on and his password has been changed. O.O He's currently waiting for 'password retrival' and hopefully he caught things in time.

Along with his post one of our mage's posted that he had been hacked recently as well, but all they got was his Shaman which he didn't like or play anymore anyway.

So...4 people...in our guild...in less than a month. That's damn scarey.

A couple of people offered some tips, one of which was the guy who's Shaman was hacked:

I got hacked recently too. thank god it was just my shaman though. If it was my mage I'd have a heart attack. One thing you should do is download AVG 7.5 (free anti-virus), which was recommended by someone on the blizzard forums in regards to hacker trojans. The second I installed it, before I could even run a scan, it found the trojan instantly and got rid of it for me. I'm not sure if its the same one going around or not but the name of the trojan i got was called "PSW.OnlineGames.TYK" in my system32 folder.

Another of our members, who surfs the WoW official forums, was asked if he's seen anything reguard excessive hacking of late, here is his response:

sorta, i browse at work from time to time (they have paranoid anti-viral so i dont have issues). There are several sites people link to that take them to sites that mimic others, like ph0tobucket.cn and similar. The " .cn " doesnt always stick out, but avoid those sites. The anti-virus thing is a good idea to get as some items can be brought in through popups on image sites (like the .cn thing i mentioned).

Basically, anti-virus is always good, im using AVG atm. And check every single link you use as if you are sleeping with it.... if you dont know where its been, dont touch it.

All this makes me thankful that all I do on my gaming machine is game. When I surf, I use my older machine...actually, I use a very old laptop which terminal serves onto my old gaming machine. LOL I had told my husband that I wanted a new, but cheap, monitor so I could move my old machine downstairs which is where I surf, blog, research, do my accounting work, etc. and not have to terminal serve anymore...along with this idea, I had thought..."Oh, I could do basic farming, etc. on my day off without being secluded upstairs in our computer room." I don't think I'll do that now...

If any of you know anymore about what anti-viruses work or don't work or files to looke for, etc. Please comment!!!