Monday, June 30, 2008

Blizzard Authenticator - $7

Another Sad Story
This morning as I sit sipping coffee out of my new United Federation of Planets coffee mug, I am reading yet another story of how someone has had their character hacked.

This person has been playing WoW for a long time and is heavy into the end-game raid scene. Her guildies helplessly looked on as her character logged in, quit the guild, casually played the game for an hour, and then stripped and sold off all the character's belongings for gold.

That gold will presumably be sold by one of those @ss hats you see in the major cities announcing cheap blizzard gold, and the best prices for leveling a character.

Sure the guild members put in a ticket, but the GMs in game have very little power over this. Hopefully this person will have things set right, but that can take weeks and a full restoration of all that hard work is nearly impossible.

Blizzard Authenticator
To help combat the gold selling/account hacking situation Blizz announced the introduction of a supplemental authentication method. A key chain sized widget called the Blizzard Authenticator.

Here is how it works. Once you have received your authenticator you associate it with your account via a web page in the account management section of Blizzard's gaming web site by entering the unit's unique serial-number-like code.

Then each time you log into the game the Authenticator generates a unique, one-time use password which you use to log in with. The next time you play the password will be different, so keyloggers and trojans thus become obsolete.

But only if you have one of these.

Mine is on order as of this morning. The whole thing comes delivered to your house for $7.

I say go pro-active, protect yourself now.

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