World of Warcraft Security concerns

It is a bit of dangerous when players log in World of Warcraft even other MMO cause  the system requires players to supply their username and password. These games are traced and targeted by various Trojans on computers that can grab player’s account details fully . This kind of situation can be seen when using account management facilities online. This type of authentication is vulnerable to Keystroke logging. Early in May 2006, it is reported attacks came out and some even could be traced back to July 30, 2005. Every year, we will receive lots of players’ complaints about account security.

 In September 2006, reports emerged of spoof World of Warcraft gaming advice websites that contained malware. Vulnerable computers would be infected through their web browser, downloading a program that would then relay back account information. Blizzard's account support teams experienced high demand during this episode, stating that many users had been affected. Claims were also made that telephone support was closed for isolated periods due to the volume of calls and resulting queues. In April 2007, attacks evolved to take advantage of further exploits involving animated cursors, with multiple websites being used. Security researcher group Symantec released a report stating that a compromised World of Warcraft account was worth US$10 on the black market, compared to US$6 to US$12 for a compromised computer (correct as of March 2007). In February 2008, phishing emails were distributed requesting that users validate their account information using a fake version of the World of Warcraft account management pages. In June 2008, Blizzard announced the Blizzard Authenticator, a hardware security token that provides two factor security. The token generates an one-time password based code that the player supplies when logging on. The password is only valid for a limited time, thus providing extra security against keylogging malware.

A system named Wardon on the Windows version of the game is used on computer to detect the other malicious software that can steal your account information. There has been some controversy as to the legality of Warden. Warden uses techniques similar to anti-virus software in order to analyse other running software on the players' PCs, as well as the file system. However, unlike most anti-virus software, it sends a portion of this information back to Blizzard, which caused privacy advocates to accuse it of being spyware. One example of the information Warden collects is the title of every window open on the system while WoW is running. We don’t know whether all information is passed and encrypted on internet but what can be sure is it could possibly be. However, many players supported this software neglecting the few cheating.