Originally posted by fat_taddler

Let me start by saying that I am a CISSP certified, Director of Information Technology for a fairly large financial institution and am fully aware of the importance of account security and end user responsibility.

 

For the first time, I received the infamous ANet email "someone - hopefully you (haha) changed the email address on this account"

 

I was sincerely hoping that it was simply spam but when I got home today and attempted to log into GW2 I realized that I had in fact been hacked.

 

Being an IT person who is very sensitive to risk exposure, you can imagine that my home PC is very fortified.  On top of that, I just bought a new rig that is only two weeks old so it's very clean.  I run the latest version of Kaspersky AV and have every protection component turned on.

 

At my office, we have very robust security controls in place which are audited by a division of the government once a year and must pass strict penetration testing twice annually.  

 

That being said, I think I can safely say that I was not the victim of a keylogger attack.

 

Now for the kicker, the only email address I use for gaming is the one that was changed and the only other time I've ever used that password in conjunction with that email address was on this website about two years ago (not this account).  

 

I like this website and use it frequently but I have to suspect at this point that it may have been compromised. 

 

I'm certainly not saying this to be malicious towards the admins of MMORPG.com, only to inform them and other users of this site that there may have been a breech of one of the  user account databases associated with this site.

 

If you use the same email here as well as GW2, please be aware that there may be a significant risk that your account could be compromised.

 

how old was that account on mmorpg.com that you believe was hacked?

because a few months ago the site here was hacked.

Originally posted by Castillle
Well...I use my mmorpg.com email account for GW2 and I didnt get any email like you said but then again I dont think I had this account in 2010..

*Looks at join date, looks at person, looks at join date again* 

Erm

Whats the matter with you people? 

The OP has posted clearly in good faith, and with the intention of helping other people avoid  what happened to him. First reaction was saying he was a liar and he was making everything up. Then an MMORPG administrator admits the story he is telling is probably truth (btw, MMORPG didnt inform us of that breach of security, bad for them). As we cant call him a liar anymore, we mock his job, his mistake and probably his football team if he has any.... Ofc he made a mistake....he is making it public for your  benefit. I for one am thankful towards anyone who cares about my accounts not being hacked, so thank you OP.

Originally posted by freston

Whats the matter with you people? 

The OP has posted clearly in good faith, and with the intention of helping other people avoid  what happened to him. First reaction was saying he was a liar and he was making everything up. Then an MMORPG administrator admits the story he is telling is probably truth (btw, MMORPG didnt inform us of that breach of security, bad for them). As we cant call him a liar anymore, we mock his job, his mistake and probably his football team if he has any.... Ofc he made a mistake....he is making it public for your  benefit. I for one am thankful towards anyone who cares about my accounts not being hacked, so thank you OP.

 

It's his language. The things he says doesnt rate him as an IT security professional. There are plenty of cases of websites being breached, credit card numbers stolen and things a lot worse than a bit of game drama. Relying on SOHO anti malware for client protection is what most of us would do at home, but to hold it as a paragon of defense belies his inexperience.

Originally posted by rounner

Originally posted by freston

Whats the matter with you people? 

The OP has posted clearly in good faith, and with the intention of helping other people avoid  what happened to him. First reaction was saying he was a liar and he was making everything up. Then an MMORPG administrator admits the story he is telling is probably truth (btw, MMORPG didnt inform us of that breach of security, bad for them). As we cant call him a liar anymore, we mock his job, his mistake and probably his football team if he has any.... Ofc he made a mistake....he is making it public for your  benefit. I for one am thankful towards anyone who cares about my accounts not being hacked, so thank you OP.

 

It's his language. The things he says doesnt rate him as an IT security professional. There are plenty of cases of websites being breached, credit card numbers stolen and things a lot worse than a bit of game drama. Relying on SOHO anti malware for client protection is what most of us would do at home, but to hold it as a paragon of defense belies his inexperience.

2 years ago i got in a discussion with a dick here on this site (he bragged about joining guilds, robbing their banks and leaving them) I called him a sociopath. He started joking about my "expert knowledge" and asked me if i learned a lot about sociopaths while i was flipping hamburgers. I made the mistake of telling him ive been a practicing clinical psychiatrist for 17 years so, yes , i had expert knowledge on the fact. Lots of people proceeded to demonstrate how i was lying: someone with that kind of studies couldnt make so many grammatical and spelling mistakes as i made. I was just making it all up. Fun fact is it was all true. Im spanish, english is a learned language for me and ofc i make mistakes when i write in it- dont be so hasty to play Sherlock on other forum members, you may just overdo it-

MMORPG staff conceded that the facts he is stating are probably truth (they are consistent with the dates of a security breach they didnt make public) Thats good enough for me.

Originally posted by oscarian

There's another place your email address would be recorded - in the GW2 database.  Given the massive number of other compromised account reports I'm seeing, I can only suggest this is the more likely cause of your GW2 account being compromised.  

I dunno .. a Gw2 gaming forums being hacked, both Yahoo and Nividia being hacked ( In July I believe ) it's a lot of emails etc for people to try 

Originally posted by freston

 

MMORPG staff conceded that the facts he is stating are probably truth (they are consistent with the dates of a security breach they didnt make public) Thats good enough for me.

Actually, it was stated that we did inform everyone back in 2010.

Originally posted by Requiem1066

I dunno .. a Gw2 gaming forums being hacked, both Yahoo and Nividia being hacked ( In July I believe ) it's a lot of emails etc for people to try 

dont forget blizzard being hacked

could be 30 million+ emails  from players that ever played WOW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 or any battlenet game

(Blizzard never gave numbers)

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html

Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China.

Originally posted by Amana

Originally posted by freston

 

MMORPG staff conceded that the facts he is stating are probably truth (they are consistent with the dates of a security breach they didnt make public) Thats good enough for me.

Actually, it was stated that we did inform everyone back in 2010.

If i got the facts wrong, i apologize

The hostility to the OP isn't really shocking. GW2 fans that haven't been hacked are up in arms anytime someone claims there is any reason other than people practically posting their password for all to see for these hacks.

I am inclined to agree with the OP that MMORPG.com is a good candidate for how this happened as it's the only gaming website I go to and use the same email that I used for GW2.

Originally posted by fat_taddler

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

I'm Bill Gates himself, this is my hidden personality.

True story.

This said, yes, if you use the same mail/password for fansite forums and for your games, you DESERVE to be hacked.

I don't think I "DESERVED" to get hacked and I'm not looking for a pitty party.  I'm simply pointing out a very obvious connection that should be looked into.

 

People on this site are pretty vicious

They are and those of us with common sense thank you for your posting this information. It's been said that people have had the suspicion that those hacked were using the same info on these type websites and the game. that's the best explanation i've heard so far as to how this is happening to so many people.

This thread has runs its course.

Locking it up.