Blizzard Authenticator adds new layer of security, for a price
by Chris Chester 
Jun 26th 2008 at 8:00PM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Exploits, MMO industry
When you play online games these days, you always have to be mindful that you don't leave yourself vulnerable to viruses, account fraud, and hacks. Something as seemingly simplistic as a hidden keylogger in a UI mod can open the floodgates to strangers to come on your computer and take your account information. Stories abound of players losing accounts they've dumped thousands of hours into because they didn't take the proper precautions. While some of the blame certainly lies with the players, there are some critics who have charge that the MMO industry doesn't do enough to prevent fraud.Enter the Blizzard Authenticator. This new keychain SecurID device can be attached to your World of Warcraft account, making it impossible for anybody to access it without the Authenticator plugged into the computer They'll be debuting the device at the upcoming Blizzard Invitational, but it should be available on Blizzard's online store soon at the low, low price of $6.50. It's a small price to pay for peace of mind.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PurityKnight said on 10:45PM 6-26-2008
Eh.
That's pretty shameful of Blizzard to sell extra security for your WoW client. That should be a basic feature... it just looks obnoxious when Blizzard is making billions and they have to nickle and dime their customers for basic security measures?
Ponderous.
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jmet said on 9:12AM 6-27-2008
Shameful for them to "offer" a device that is basically un hackable? The same style of device that banks and government agencies use to help protect yourself from your own computer? People getting hacked is an issue on the users end, something Blizzard is not and could not be responsible for. How dare Blizzard......
Gilthas said on 11:50PM 6-26-2008
From what I understand, it's not a dongle (which you plug into your PC), but an external device which displays a 6-digit one-time password (similar to the RSA SecurID device - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID ).
And about the cost - it's not that much money to pay for a little extra security, certainly not since it's a one-time expense.
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Fizzl said on 2:29AM 6-27-2008
That sounds pretty cheap for an RSA style SecurID Token.
Sounds like the new excuse for not raiding will be 'I lost my token' :P
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Poozle said on 3:55AM 6-27-2008
This sounds like a good idea to me and also sounds like the sort of thing that will be bundled with MMOs in the future, seems like a logical step to me.
No doubt eventually it will be compromised but will be more secure than the current username/password method.
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anahka said on 7:42AM 6-27-2008
This is not a device that will plug into your pc. Do a little research next time will ya?
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Heraclea said on 7:43AM 6-27-2008
"It's a small price to pay for piece of mind."
Piece of mind? *Peace* of mind, I think.
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ScytheNoire said on 9:11AM 6-27-2008
There are other things they could've done that would have cost nothing to the user, but at least they are doing something about the major problem they have. Better than what they have done for all this time, which is blame users, screw them over, and continue to allow hackers to have a field day and sell gold.
Now to see how they implement it. An idea is easy, execution is the hard part. So lets hold judgment until they accomplish this.
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Leshrac said on 2:08PM 6-27-2008
Everyone I've known that had their account hacked had their items and characters restored relatively quickly and intact. Blizzard has to pay those people to restore your account, those people aren't cheap - they require a salary, overhead, benefits, etc. I'm sure Blizzard CSRs would rather be doing more meaningful things then dealing with this crap.
So - I guess if Blizzard does nothing they get blamed for doing nothing, and if they try to rectify the problem they get blamed there as well?
And Blizzard has done a lot of remove spammers, maybe if you played the game and paid attention you'd know that.
Thrush said on 9:44AM 6-27-2008
I hope they are ready with millions of these because at that price I think alot of people will want one. Even if they dont plan on using it, its still a novel WoW keychain. I think I paid more for my Carrot on a Stick keychain from Jinx.
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George said on 8:05PM 6-27-2008
They could have added geo-location to the logins to prevent sharing and hacking of your account. should someone not in your area log in, like from china, they would be found out instantly and the account closed preventing any loss of items. It would simply not allow to log in at all.
How do I know this works? Because I peronally impemented this very security system for a project I worked on. Took all of 2 days and $200 to buy the ip database to complete the real time geo locator sytstem and store the locations of where you where loggin in from in our database and to check it everytime you logged in. Very simple. Why blizzard never bothered to do this I have no idea. This saved us so much grief and money and worked perfectly.
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Malixu said on 6:28PM 6-30-2008
Except IPs aren't location specific. Sure, it tends to work, but my IP address shows up 300 miles away, in most databases. I've had connections from around here that show up in Sweden (satellite uplink).
Secondly, it would slow them down for a good few minutes, tops. It's not exactly hard to get a server in whatever country you fancy and bounce traffic through it. Hell, if they're cracking home computers, they could just route traffic through your own PC and around to Blizzard.
Andrew Hartsell said on 5:07PM 7-01-2008
That sounds like a great idea. I would've been really stoked when I was out of the state for a training session and I wasn't able to log in to WoW because my IP didn't match.
Blizzard actually *does* some rudimentary IP location tracking for the purpose of keeping track of power-leveling services and so on. Their customer service forums are full of incidents of people "violating the laws of physics" by logging in from New York, logging out, then logging in from Budapest 5 minutes later.