Thousands of Guild Wars 2 passwords hacked
Update: Stolen passwords and email addresses used to access unspecified accounts
Update
An NCsoft representative has a been in touch to clarify the 11,000 figure, which according to the company relates to "hacked and blocking issues".
Original story
ArenaNet has warned Guild Wars 2 players that hackers are using stolen email addresses and passwords from other sites to try and access their accounts.
On Sunday September 2 NC Soft said, via the official Guild Wars 2 wiki, that it had received "approximately 8500 new support tickets related to hacked accounts and other blocking issues" and by Monday September 3 had "helped 2574 players with hacked accounts". Latest updates to the wiki have not included updates to those numbers.
"If you don't want your account hacked, don't use the same email address and password for Guild Wars 2 that you've used for another game or web site," ArenaNet wrote on the wiki, as reported by ArsTechnica
"Hackers have big lists of email addresses and passwords that they've harvested from malware and from security vulnerabilities in other games and web sites, and they're systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts."
One of the sites accessed by hackers was a Guild Wars fan site.
Maybe they shouldn't force you to use an e-mail adress as login account.
It would certainly help if login names weren't email addresses but the problem is people reusing their passwords, not really a failure on ANet's part.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Nicholas Pantazis on 10th September 2012 4:53pm
If someone has your email address, they have your login name - and vice versa - making it easier for both to become compromised. Hacking groups must have thought it was Christmas when email addresses started replacing other login names...
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Sam Maxted on 10th September 2012 6:26pm
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Dirk van Wijk on 11th September 2012 3:08pm