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World of Warcraft's Brand New Rootkit 576

Captain Kirk writes "We all know that World of Warcraft has checked for hacks to ensure a safe game environment for all players. The latest version of these checks goes beyond anything seen so far in that what is being checked is now completely encrypted. Obviously this hits bot writers as can be seen from these complaints, But it also strikes at the privacy of all users. Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer. That can't be right."
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World of Warcraft's Brand New Rootkit

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  • You can defeat the encryption, but you have to do it a bit at a time - just takes you a couple of years.
    • by krog ( 25663 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:08PM (#21366111) Homepage
      Summary of TFA: WoW Warden now selects one of many hash algorithms and uses it in server communication. Blog author gets his panties in a bunch because Blizzard could replace one of these hash algorithms with something that collects PRIVATE PERSONAL DATA, and NO ONE WOULD EVER KNOW. A misleading Slashdot headline and poorly-written blurb is generated, and the rest is academic.
      • by wattrlz ( 1162603 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:15PM (#21366259)
        Couldn't someone who's not Blizzard, but sufficiently clever replace the algorithm with such a mal-gorithm as well?
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by krog ( 25663 )
          Anyone sufficiently clever could hackify any host program they wanted.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by davidsyes ( 765062 )
          Hell, just buy a new, dedicated computer, or clone the disk and put the clone in a new computer, and use THAT only for gaming. Or, put the clone in a multi-select bay and boot it for gaming. Sucks, but if you remove all your apps except gaming and a/v, then maybe Blizzard (or Blizzard's backers) won't see the REST of the machine.

          Multitasking has its pitfalls. When are people going to learn not try try to do EVERYTHING on just ONE computer.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by s13g3 ( 110658 )
            When EVERYBODY has $2000+ to spend on a good gaming computer that they are never going to do anything besides play one (lousy, imo) video game, and then another $600-$1000 computer that they use for their other tasks. By your line of thinking, they'll need a separate computer to open office docs in, another to do their accounting on, and yet another for basic safe web-browsing, since, G-d forbid any one of those programs where sensitive data might be entered could talk to any of those other programs, and mo
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Mister Kay ( 1119377 )
        Oh no! Blizzard is going to steal my credit card information and where I live and.... wait a second... they already have that... guess I'm safe
      • by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @02:19PM (#21367461) Journal
        The article is absolutely retarded. It never ceases to amuse me when such grandiose claims are made about customers etc... Of the 7 million WOW account holders, I would bet that 6.999 million don't even know about Warden. And I'd bet that same number, if you made them aware, still wouldn't give a toss. He's probably just a disgruntled bot author, dressing up his complaints in the guise of the public service. I can understand being paranoid to a degree, but this is just ridiculous. The author clearly has delusions of grandeur, and ideas far FAR above his station.

        This articles headline is INCREDIBLY misleading, and whoever wrote it needs a slap for their melodramatic endeavours.
        • by jeremyp ( 130771 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @04:29PM (#21369561) Homepage Journal

          Of the 7 million WOW account holders, I would bet that 6.999 million don't even know about Warden.
          Yep. That's me.

          And I'd bet that same number, if you made them aware, still wouldn't give a toss.
          Yep. That's me too.

          The thing is, since starting to play WoW my life has descended into a meaningless treadmill of levelling and grinding. There's no longer anything of interest about me that's worth stealing.
          • Quest: Lunch.

            Collect 3 hams, return to butcher.
            Collect 5 turkey, bring to Nargold Queefbeater in Stormblaughw.
            Purchase 1 loaf Sourdough +1

            Reward: Delicious, Choose one:
            1 - Club Sandwich - +5 vit for 3 hours
            -or-
            1 - Broodwich - +50 mana, -20% HP for 3 hours

            Accept Quest?
            [Yes] [No]
  • by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:02PM (#21365993) Homepage Journal
    1 computer for gaming
    1 computer for everything else

    Sorry if you can't afford a second, but that's how I do it.
    • There are also other solutions, starting from dualbooting similar that allow you to keep things separate on a single computer... if done right...

      But, yes in general it is a good idea to do dangerous things like run spyware in a totally separate computer from the one you use for any real work or banking or such...
    • by ByOhTek ( 1181381 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:13PM (#21366209) Journal
      wow works great in Wine.

      use a very restricted account when running it in wine. Problem solved.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by spun ( 1352 )

      1 computer for gaming
      1 computer for everything else
      And one computer to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them?

      Seriously though, I have a Shuttle XPC for gaming and a laptop for everything else. Gaming is the only reason I have a desktop at all, and the Shuttle is still very portable for LAN parties and such.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phasm42 ( 588479 )
      Or, stop playing WoW. More people should consider this option.
      • by EvilMonkeySlayer ( 826044 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:28PM (#21366539) Journal
        But how would I make gold from selling clam meat then?
      • by Admiral Ag ( 829695 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @02:32PM (#21367705)
        That's probably the best option. I'm a strong advocate of privacy myself, but I don't see Blizzard's actions as being particularly unreasonable. You aren't being compelled to play the game, and it's up to each individual to decide how much they trust Blizzard with this. If you don't trust them, don't play. It's quite common for people to be asked to reveal personal information in a voluntary exchange (like when you apply for a job or a bank account) and there is always the possibility that this information could be misused or abused, or that the power you give another person to access such information could be misused or abused. But these types of transactions are always voluntary, and it's really a case of caveat emptor. If you don't trust the company, then don't give them your money and your privacy will remain intact.

        Having said that, people like the author of TFA are free to object to Blizzard's policy and to attempt to persuade them to change it (like they did with the issue of gay-friendly guilds a while back). If it annoys enough of the playerbase, then it will go.

        I'm a recovering WoWaholic myself, and although I loved the game, the one thing that really bothered me (other than warlocks) was cheaters. I worked hard at the game, spent a lot of time grinding and crafting, and spent inordinate amounts of time learning the game and getting to know good people so that I could join a decent guild and progress. If cheating isn't aggressively policed, it ruins the sense of achievement for legitimate players by allowing others to free ride. I'd personally be willing to risk it to have less cheaters in the game, but YMMV.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
      That's how I do it too. My second computer is a Wii. Quite cheap.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Domini ( 103836 )
      1 ACCOUNT for gaming
      1 ACCOUNT for everything else

      Sorry if you don't have protected memory and proper permission set up.
  • by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:02PM (#21365995)
    Then don't play. It really IS that simple. If you're having too big of a problem with that, put the mouse down and go join a support group.
    • Or... (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Elemenope ( 905108 )

      And I know this sounds crazy in our faux capitalist "customer is always wrong" universe, but why not organize and complain to Blizzard? It's not like players aren't already organized into large social groups (c.f. Clans, etc.). They could be mobilized and if they spoke with a collective voice might have an impact. I doubt most players would be comfortable with some corp. being able to toy with their boxes at will, and if it were explained in those terms I think you wouldn't have to work hard to convince p

      • Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)

        by nuzak ( 959558 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:31PM (#21366585) Journal
        > why not organize and complain to Blizzard?

        Players: "Blizzard, your malware sucks, and you suck for using it!"

        Blizzard: "What? Sorry, these piles of money you keep forking over to us every month kind of muffle the sound in here."
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Elemenope ( 905108 )

          It's hard not to be quite so cynical these days, but there is little call for it here. Sure companies like money, but the smart ones don't go about strangling the geese that lay their golden eggs. WOW won't last forever; it will soon enough look butt-ugly and lacking in interactivity when the next generation of MMOs arrive, as is the way of all software games development. When that happens, keeping its current customer base happy and making them feel they can trust Blizzard is huge in getting the next suc

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Then don't play. It really IS that simple. If you're having too big of a problem with that, put the mouse down and go join a support group.

      a) Whoever modded this troll is on crack, this is a legitimate point.

      b) This is exactly right. I don't have a problem with this personally, but I'm sure other people do, and the proper solution for them is to not play. By not playing (and letting Blizzard know why), you send a message to them that their behavior isn't acceptable to you, and, if enough people are upset about this, they'll do something about it. Complaining to Blizzard won't change anything, you need to take action.

    • by nacturation ( 646836 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (noitarutcan)> on Thursday November 15, 2007 @02:33PM (#21367731) Journal
      A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
       
  • Unbelivable (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tainek ( 912325 ) * on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:04PM (#21366011)
    If i had a WoW account i would be cancelling it this second, no videogame has the right to violate the privacy of my computer
    • Re:Unbelivable (Score:5, Informative)

      by daeg ( 828071 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:06PM (#21366067)
      I canceled when they started adding things to their detection kit. When I saw it reading registry keys (regmon) it had NO business reading, I canceled. Did it need to read the activation keys for Windows? Absolutely not.
      • Re:Unbelivable (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:25PM (#21366457) Homepage Journal

        I canceled when they started adding things to their detection kit. When I saw it reading registry keys (regmon) it had NO business reading, I canceled. Did it need to read the activation keys for Windows? Absolutely not.
        I'm sorry to hear that.

        Out of curiosity, how would you go about detecting keyloggers and/or bots without reading the registry? Or do you just feel that Blizzard shouldn't attempt to detect abuse? Myself, I'm a player and I WANT Blizzard to look for such abuse. If someone finds that Blizzard's bot is doing something that's actually wrong (e.g. sending personal data back to home base, not just reading the registry), then I'll be the first to pressure them to fix it. However, if they're just scanning for malicious software that doesn't actually seem like a problem.

        It is CERTAINLY not a rootkit according to any definition I've ever heard.
        • Re:Unbelivable (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:48PM (#21366897) Journal
          He said activation keys for windows, so if the detection kit was really reading those then that's bad.

          Anyway why would a bot or keylogger need to write to the registry?

          Would be good if you could restrict the user account you use to run wow to only talking to blizzards IP range and local IP.
      • Re:Unbelivable (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @02:05PM (#21367241)
        I can't believe I'm forgoing a full complement of mod points to respond to you, but I get tired of seeing people go ape-shit whenever they use tools like regmon and filemon without having clue one as to what they're seeing.

        Pretty much any program will make tons of accesses to registry keys that would at first glance appear to have nothing to do with that program, because the program loads a bunch of Windows libraries that access those registry keys whenever they're loaded. The same goes for IE cookies, for any program that uses the IE rendering libraries to render HTML (including things like the frontend patchers for games like EverQuest), because those libraries go through your cookies just the same as IE does when it first loads.

        Sorry that you felt it necessary to cancel your WoW account because you didn't understand how your computer works, but at least it gives you a lot more spare time for making tin-foil hats.
    • by ajs ( 35943 )

      If i had a WoW account i would be cancelling it this second, no videogame has the right to violate the privacy of my computer
      I recommend not canceling accounts that you pay money for on the basis of Slashdot articles... especially in this case, you'd be acting on horrible misinformation. There's no rootkit here, just a bot/keylogger scanner. That's it. Blizzard's malicious rampage to detect abuse and keep their game fun to play continues....
    • If you had a WoW account, you would already voluntarily have given Blizzard your full name, snail address, email address, and credit card number. What else is it that you think they'd be interested in, precisely?
      • Re:Unbelivable (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:26PM (#21366493)

        If you had a WoW account, you would already voluntarily have given Blizzard your full name, snail address, email address, and credit card number.


        when I was playing wow I used prepaid game cards exactly for this reason... or aren't prepaid cards available anymore?
  • Privacy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Debello ( 1030486 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:05PM (#21366039)
    You've already given up your life when you start playing WoW. What do you have to keep private?
    • Why does this all sound familiar though... give up any expectation of privacy to be safer... but they assure us not to worry, they are only looking out for us.... we can trust them...
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by king-manic ( 409855 )

      You've already given up your life when you start playing WoW. What do you have to keep private?
      No one must know iloveBoobs69 the smoking hot Night elf huntress is actually King-manic!
  • Then don't play (Score:2, Insightful)

    by UDGags ( 756537 )
    If you don't like it then don't accept the TOS and don't play. It is really simple. I've played WoW since it came out at a very high level and I welcome Blizzard trying to stop the root kits/gold farmers/etc.
    • Very sensible of you - but didn't you realize, sensible and logical are flamebait here on /.

      <sarcasm>
      You see, as an individual, you are allowed what you want however you want it, and the fact that you don't need it is irrelevant. The creators and distributors have no right to ask you for anything in response.
      </sarcasm>

      Seriously modtards - He's right. People have to go without all the time. There was a time when WoW didn't exist and people survived it. People can survive it now. If you don't like
  • Where does right enter into it? We're talking about business here, so the operative qualifier is whether or not it is profitable.

    How many users will these alienate? A slim minority of elite geeks who actually have a clue what's going on inside their boxes -- you know, the set that contains the sub-set of people technically advanced enough to bother pirating games.

    Is this going to slow the sign-ups of new accounts? Not bloody likely. Who listens to geeks? Not my boss, and not my neighbours asking fo
    • That's so... so... pragmatically mercenary of you.

      I'm so proud of you. Really. I even forgive you for the whole, you know, Mac thing.

  • Define rootkit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:09PM (#21366143) Homepage Journal
    So, now a "rootkit" is any program that does something we're not sure of?

    I thought a rootkit was a program designed to take control of a system remotely or offer access to that system? This is just an obfuscated program (encrypted is a bit strong for something that is "decrypted" on your own system where you can watch its behavior).

    Seriously, if this is the worst that Blizzard does, I'm a happy camper. They really do have serious problems with their users being exploited, and detecting these problems early is all good. In my case, they'll see everything that's in my virtual Windows environment under Wine.

    Now, if someone proves that they're reading personal files out side of the Windows system directory or the WoW installation, then we can talk. Until then, this is a non-issue.
  • by Bryansix ( 761547 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:10PM (#21366155) Homepage
    Does the thing hide itself? Can't you just uninstall WoW? (Maybe you can't but maybe you need mental help.) Ya, you don't know what it is doing but you don't know what most programs are going unless you reverse engineer them. I think this is just the cheaters getting their panties in a twist. Especially because it means the end to a real source of income for those who harvest gold and sell it in the real world.
    • by geekoid ( 135745 )
      I'm not a cheater, and it get's my panties in a twist.
      But I got a thing about people rifling through my stuff.
    • by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:29PM (#21366561) Homepage Journal

      Does the thing hide itself?
      No.

      Can't you just uninstall WoW?
      Sure.

      Ya, you don't know what it is doing
      Actually you know pretty well what it's been doing because with minor refinements, it's been doing just about the same thing for 3 years.

      I think this is just the cheaters getting their panties in a twist.
      Ding!

      Especially because it means the end to a real source of income for those who harvest gold
      Gold harvesting is easy. What's hard is maintaining your account for more than a week once you start trying to sell it online. This is why the pro gold farmers/sellers are all using level 1 accounts. At level 1 gold farming is a bit more difficult, so they have to abuse the game in order to profit. This program detects that kind of abuse, and THAT is why they're upset.
  • by Zuato ( 1024033 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:11PM (#21366171)
    I play World of Warcraft. As a subscriber that plays this game I am ok with Warden as it stands. I want to play a game where hackers and cheaters are caught and banned. I know a lot of people despise the speed hacks and of course the gold farmers, so I don't see what the fuss is all about.

    The likely hood of Blizzard hacking or stealing personal data is very small. They know that they could lose their cash cow by doing anything malicious with this information/software.

    For those that fear credit card and personal information being lifted, I'm a little baffled. When you sign up for an account you enter most of the same personal info that is going to be on your PC anyway, and unless you are using game cards they already have at least one of your credit cards on file. All information that subscribers gave up willingly.

    That aside, I did read the article and find the technology fascinating.
    • When you sign up for an account you enter most of the same personal info that is going to be on your PC anyway,

      I wasn't aware that one must enter, say, social-security information, banking information, medical records, or personal communications -- all of which are on my PC. Those people at Blizzard must really want to know a lot about you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ad0gg ( 594412 )
      What i don't get is why people would play a game where they need a bot to level themselves up. Is the game that tedious?
      • by Sparr0 ( 451780 ) <sparr0@gmail.com> on Thursday November 15, 2007 @03:21PM (#21368533) Homepage Journal
        Bots are not just for leveling up. There are PLENTY of other extremely tedious parts of the game. When I still played WoW for fun, before I started farming gold full time, I used single-purpose "bots" to automate most of the tedious parts of the game. Travel (30 minutes of walking and waiting for boats/zepplins is not fun), harvesting trade skill resources (find minerals, right click, wait 10 seconds, repeat), and combat (both as a melee fighter and as a healer. bots make great healers, especially in raids), all good targets for automation.
  • a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer. That can't be right.

    If playing WOW or any other online game on your computer presents a hazard to that computer, the solution would seem to be to play it on a dedicated machine - one where you don't have any files or confidential data to worry about. That then immediately points to the value of a dedicated gaming box, and from there it's just a hop skip and jump to consoles... Now, wasn't the X

  • by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:17PM (#21366293) Homepage

    If you start your architectural design from the assumption that the client is a malicious bot, then you can design out vulnerability. Blizzard chose not to do that. They thought that they could enforce trust on the client side, and let clients make decisions about (oh, just for example) player position. Well, that makes them idiots. Idiot savants, maybe, but idiots none-the-less.

    The client cannot be trusted. Clients request, servers decide and dictate. Let the client anticipate and drift its local world state all you like, but the server must never, ever, accept a state change from the client, only requests. That's the way it has to be, unless you - demonstrably - want to play catchup for ever and a day. And if you get caught in that hole, then you need a spade the size of WOW's playerbase and Blizzard's resources in order to keep digging it deeper.

    • by Cheesey ( 70139 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:41PM (#21366745)
      The purpose of Warden is not just to detect cheats but also automated players ("bots").

      Bot prevention is an extremely hard problem. Warden gives Blizzard a way to send arbitrary code to the player's computer in order to carry out any "test for a bot" that they like. If the set of available tests were restricted to a defined interface, then bot authors would be able to fake the test results, and according to TFA, this is actually what happened: "previously, roughly 318 permutations of Warden existed per patch". Presumably the bot code would detect which version of Warden was in use, and use the appropriate Warden-faking code for that version.

      Now, many more permutations exist, so this type of attack is much more difficult. I find it particularly interesting to point out that Warden doesn't actually have any new capabilities: it has always had the ability to accept arbitrary code from Blizzard, and all that has happened here is that Blizzard have made their "test for a bot" more difficult to fake.
    • by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:42PM (#21366751)
      all nice in theory, but workable only if your clients could all have 10ms latency. When you start designing games to be playable with 400+ms latency you need to make compromises, and it becomes REALLY difficult to get things working well (I know, in a previous life I've been a games network programmer for an fps, it was quite challenging).

      In wow (and fps games in general) player movement is not predictable, at any point a player can stop and turn with no inertia (so it's not like, say, a space sim game where you can do dead reckoning at even fairly high latencies and make things look decent) and if you've seen any wow pvp you know it consists of a lot of jumping around and running through each other to try to get behind the other player. Also several abilities need to be used with very tight timings, there is the gcd to take care of etc. etc. etc.

      You need to have some things running on the client side to make the game playable for as many people as possible (for example oceanic players on US servers), and the problem is what you do when the client and the server disagree on where you are and what you are doing: tilt the balance too much towards the client and you have easy exploits, tilt the balance too much towards the server and the game will start to feel 'sluggish' and sometimes outright broken (I was right on top of the other player, why did I get 'out of range').

      It's not an easy problem to solve for a game as complex as wow, if it was do you think that with all the money they're raking in they wouldn't have fixed it yet?

  • If you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about when it comes to Warden. The fact that people still persist in finding ways around it to screw with the game aggravates me no end. The only thing new that Warden is really doing is that it's hiding better, so as to prevent a standardized way of detecting, and foiling, it without breaking the hash encryption.
  • Duh... what's new? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mortonda ( 5175 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:19PM (#21366319)
    Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer.

    You do realize that *any* software you install on your computer can do this? Unless you have read the full source code and compiled it yourself (Ignoring the possibility of a trojan'd compiler) there is a possibility that a program could do these things. So what's new?
    • by Shoeler ( 180797 ) *

      You do realize that *any* software you install on your computer can do this? Unless you have read the full source code and compiled it yourself (Ignoring the possibility of a trojan'd compiler) there is a possibility that a program could do these things. So what's new?


      Man, where are my mod points when I need em. ++
    • Ah, this is the often ignored genius of systems like the APT installation software in Debian flavored Linux distros. When you download software from a trusted repository, you are downloading binaries that have been compiled and digitally signed using the private key of people that you (implicitly) trust. This is a good thing, because the sources you are downloading have been checked by an expert third party that you believe capable of doing the job. This mitigates the need for trusting the software provider
  • As far as I am aware, Warcraft on my Mac is fairly sandboxed; it cant read all the programs that are running or other files on my system without my permission. It may be different on Windows but this is why you shouldn't run as root. It could read files that it has READ permissions for. Want to limit it? Run it under limited permissions... problem solved.

    People are really too panicky. True this is a shitty thing to do and yes it sux... but they suck; afterall they quashed the open source warcraft server.

  • by BrianRoach ( 614397 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:25PM (#21366447)

    They clearly state in their TOS that they do this (Section 14)
    http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html [worldofwarcraft.com]

    Don't like it? Don't play the game. Very simple.

    And in fact, when you first sign up for an account, Blizzard gives you 30 days to return the game for a *full refund* if you don't agree to the TOS and don't wish to play. That seems pretty fair IMHO, and far more than most game companies will do.

    - Roach
  • I find it funny people complain about this sort of thing and they do not even refer to the fact Blizzard uses case insensitive passwords? Curious.
  • Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eddy Luten ( 1166889 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:32PM (#21366611)

    I simply do not understand some of the people's comments on this matter. "I feel more secure with this" isn't a very good argument. Games have bugs: if a game can access and modify your entire system, a bug exposing this would be very dangerous.

    Game developers have no right whatsoever to delve into your personal assets no matter what the intent might be. There are various examples known world wide such as in Argentina (1980's) when all of the communications were monitored by the government to "capture the terrorists." Hackers and cheaters are not even remotely in that realm, so my computer which holds very confidential information should not be monitored. (Though it might make an interesting paper comparing hackers to terrorists)

    When I drive on the South Florida roads I am constantly monitored by cameras at each stoplight, I don't particularly would like to be monitored in my own home where I still have the illusion of privacy. However naive that might sound.

  • Oh noes! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0xdeadbeef ( 28836 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:46PM (#21366849) Homepage Journal
    The program they tell me they're running to detect trojans and cheat-ware encrypts what it is doing to protect itself from the trojan and cheat-ware authors. THE SKY IS FALLING!

    If you don't trust Blizzard, why did you install the game? Why did you give them your credit card number?

    But I love this stuff. It means my non-technical guildies are less likely to be exploited, it means the gold farmers have it that much harder, and drives away the vocal, whiny morons, who are likely the same vocal, whiny morons in the game.
  • Can I return it now? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by campnic ( 1078981 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:50PM (#21366953)
    If they have just changed Warden and I'm no longer happy to agree to their terms of service, can i return wow and BC for a full refund? Don't I agree to let them run what software is in the box when i agree to the ToS? If they change the software can't i change my mind?
  • by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Thursday November 15, 2007 @02:06PM (#21367257) Homepage

    Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer. That can't be right."

    But, apparently, installing four CDs full of unsigned, unaudited third party code which can do anything on your computer is okay. And having third party software which is in constant communication with its authors is okay. And having it download and execute new code every Tuesday, with or without your approval, is okay.

    It's only _now_ that it's becoming a problem?

    If you don't trust Blizzard, don't buy their software and don't install it on your PC. How hard is that?

  • by extra the woos ( 601736 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @02:54PM (#21368133)
    So of course he's trying to make a fuss about it--It will hurt his ability to help people cheat. Slashdot has been trolled, sigh. Warden is good for us that actually just want to play the game and not have people cheating. If you are that concerned about it, please feel free not to play. No one is forcing you. It isn't being installed behind your back or hidden in any way. QQ moar, as we say in WoW. :)
  • Not a rootkit. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @03:44PM (#21368911) Journal
    I do not see any indication anywhere that this:
    1. Hides itself from the user.
    2. Remains on the system even after World of Warcraft is uninstalled.

    So while privacy concerns may be valid, I don't see how this is a "rootkit."
  • Unfounded paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Thursday November 15, 2007 @04:33PM (#21369617) Journal
    The author of the article trots out the straw man argument that an enterprising Blizzard employee could create some devious code that secretly steals credit card information. If I were that enterprising Blizzard employee, I'd be spending more time focused on stealing ALL of the credit card information that Blizzard has on file to do their monthly reoccuring billing with. I'm sure it's all sitting in a database on Blizzard's LAN, probably encrypted and probably protected by a firewall and some pretty gnarly security policies... but it's there and ripe for the picking if an employee has the right sort of access. I haven't seen anyone mention that yet.

    As a very casual WoW player (I only have 1 level 70 main toon and I only just started raiding Karazhan), I'm glad that Blizzard is doing what they can to combat botting. On another toon of mine I just got into a guild where one of the guys was talking about how his friend had botted 75,000 honor during AV weekend. That pretty much pissed me off. I don't care too much because I'm not playing the game in any sort of competitive manner, but it kind of irks me.

    I'd really like to see something like Warden being used to combat the problem of aimbots and wallhacks in FPS games. I stopped playing FPS games all together because of that issue.

What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie

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