June 1st, 2009
Aw crap. Even after reformating and reinstalling Windows and WoW, the hacker was able to strike again. Even as I was writing my last post, he/she was in-game and ruining my WoW life. I didn’t realize this until I checked the Red Devils web page to see the ominous posting “Seabrat Hacked Again?” Oh, boy – that can’t be good. Sure enough, apparently I had been. But… I had received no e-mails from Blizzard regarding a password reset, e-mail change, etc. When I tried to log into the game, sure enough – my password was invalid. It had been changed.
I called Blizzard… again. While sympathetic, there wasn’t much the assistant could really do. I explained that this person had been screwing with me for a week now and asked for a password reset. I also explained that I had received no messages from Blizzard regarding any account activity related to this latest hack. When I provided him with my e-mail address, all he would tell me was that wasn’t the one currently on the account – he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Ah ha! The hacker had obtained access to my e-mail and grabbed the messages before I could get them. That’s why I never heard anything from Blizzard. I did manage to get Blizzard to set my e-mail back to the correct one.
I then changed my e-mail password and created a new e-mail account as well. Then off to the Blizzard support site to update my WoW account e-mail to the new one. When I logged into Blizzards website, I got a message that the account had been banned, but was able to successfully change the e-mail to the new address. I sent an e-mail to Account Administration, but have not heard anything at this point. With the account banned, no one can get to it – not me and not the hacker.
I sent an e-mail to my ISP support group asking them to review the access to my e-mail account over the past few days. I am waiting to see how they respond.
This leaves me with a number of mysteries.
Do I still have a keylogger or some sort of spyware on my PC? Having reformatted and reinstalling everything, I would hope not. It is possible that I did not correctly wipe the main drive and left a hidden partition with the infection on it. It’s also possible such a partition exists on my second hard drive, which I did not reformat. Finally, it’s possible that this was done solely by hacking my e-mail account (my WoW account name and e-mail name were the same) and using that to reset my password, intercepting the auto-response e-mails from Blizzard.
If I have to completely wipe out the entire PC, how do I save my personal files such as pictures, videos, spreadsheets and countless other files that I have developed over the past 20 years? I don’t want to lose all that, but don’t want to keep reinfecting my PC when I restore those files from whatever (external hard drive, etc.)
Is the infection actually in my BIOS (Phoenix Award v6.00PG)? I spent some time trying to find a BIOS reinstaller on the web, but was not successful. I may have a BIOS CD somewhere, so I’ll have to find that.
What will Blizzard do at this point? Since the hacker knows my account name, is it possible Blizzard would create a new account and transfer everything? From what I’ve read, they will not. Or will they even bother to resecure this account, and instead just say, “Sorry baby, you’re screwed. This account is gone forever.” Hopefully not, I don’t think I could commit to opening a new account and starting over – especially if this can just keep happening.
Finally, since none of the scans, firewalls and spyware utilities I have run (and there are a lot) have found any sign of the infection, how is anyone ever able to be certain that their PC is secure? Have we gotten to the point where you can never be secure if you are connected to the internet? Are the bad guys that good and the good guys that bad at this?
Stay tuned… I have a feeling this ain’t over yet.
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