Game News Blizzard hacked: Emails, security questions and answers and encrypted Diablo 3 passwords accessed

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Blizzard; Diablo III; Mike Morhaime

Remember all that great security for Diablo 3 and how it was people being careless with passwords that resulted in their accounts being hacked? Well, in a completely unexpected development today, Blizzard announced:

Players and Friends,

Even when you are in the business of fun, not every week ends up being fun. This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard. We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.​

Translation: They've had access to our network for months now, which our internal team suspected, but we realised we couldn't hold off announcing it any longer.

At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.​

Translation: Blizzard's financial transaction and account system was actually built by someone else with a team of professionals who knew what they were doing, as opposed to our internal collection of monkeys who couldn't peel a banana even if they had a Troy McClure instruction video.

Some data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. For players on North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) the answer to the personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were also accessed. Based on what we currently know, this information alone is NOT enough for anyone to gain access to Battle.net accounts.​

Translation: Oh yes it is - but we know they took more anyway...

We also know that cryptographically scrambled versions of Battle.net passwords (not actual passwords) for players on North American servers were taken. We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually. As a precaution, however, we recommend that players on North American servers change their password. Please click this link to change your password. Moreover, if you have used the same or similar passwords for other purposes, you may want to consider changing those passwords as well.

In the coming days, we'll be prompting players on North American servers to change their secret questions and answers through an automated process. Additionally, we'll prompt mobile authenticator users to update their authenticator software.​

Translation: There's a flaw in the current authenticator which we've known about for a while now but we're not admitting that yet.

As a reminder, phishing emails will ask you for password or login information. Blizzard Entertainment emails will never ask for your password. We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of you and understand you may have questions. Please find additional information here.

We take the security of your personal information very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this has happened.
Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime​

Translation: Sorry we got caught and couldn't hold off fudging it any longer.

Thanks Metro!

 

[Fat Dragon]

 

[Metro]

The probability of me buying Diablo 3 on sale went from 20% to 0%. Was pretty hilarious to see all the Blizzard denial about D3 and how no one could possibly hack into their system to compromise accounts... so much for that.

 

[Gregz]

 

[waywardOne]

Now I know why public executions drew such crowds.

 

[Morkar Left]

First I read "Blizzard hacked Emails".

Whatever, I wonder how many smaller companies get hacked all the time and you will never know as their customer.

 

[sea]

How do Blizzard know no financial or personally identifying information was compromised, exactly? And was that information stored securely as well, or just passwords?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

How do Blizzard know no financial or personally identifying information was compromised, exactly?

Gut feeling. Trust them.

 

[TripleA]

How do Blizzard know no financial or personally identifying information was compromised, exactly? And was that information stored securely as well, or just passwords?

I would guess audit trails: A DB would tend to keep track of what data was changed or accessed and by whom. Both to help track down external breaches of security and rogue employees.

Won't help if your security has been compromised to the point that someone was able to effectively just copy [unencrypted] files off of the file system, of course. But then by that point:

a) You might as well call it a day, pack up, go home and look for another field of work.

b) You are unlikely to find out you've been breached in the first place.

...so I doubt it's so bad, in this case.

 

[Kane]

First I read "Blizzard hacked Emails".

Whatever, I wonder how many smaller companies get hacked all the time and you will never know as their customer.

not many, because it's a) statistically unlikely that you are involved in any way with a small company and b) the hackers go after prime targets like Sony or Blizzard. Considering these are professional hackers and not some kid pressing a button, the effort would be hardly worth it for some 10 man corp.


The hackers already got what they wanted: 10 million valid email addresses. While it's funny auctioning off some kids WoW characters and/or cause some chaos, you're not making big money with that.

 

[DraQ]

*

The probability of me buying Diablo 3 on sale went from 20% to 0%.

Mine went from 0% to 0%.


Would be around 20% if they released a version without their always online DRM or online activation, but with LAN/internet functionality and at bargain bin price.

*) can has blue pizza dragon?

 

[Metro]

How do Blizzard know no financial or personally identifying information was compromised, exactly? And was that information stored securely as well, or just passwords?

Well, federal law (in the U.S.) requires them to use encryption when storing credit card data. I'm assuming they aren't dumb enough to ignore that. And -- I might be wrong -- but I believe cracking currently existing encryption is borderline impossible without the assistance of a few acres of super computers. Of course, if a hacker managed to get the key then... yeah.

 

[Kane]

In reality you never know for certain. On the one hand blizzard has been running proper security for a very long time. The fact that they were one of the first companies to adopt 2 factor authentication shows that they at least were concerned about security. (If you remember SOE, they went 2FA after they were basically forced to.) I think your data is pretty save with blizzard.

That being said, blizzard is also a prime target for the best of the best, for obvious reasons. If they managed to extract your info... well, it wouldn't have been save anywhere else.

 

[Morkar Left]

First I read "Blizzard hacked Emails".

Whatever, I wonder how many smaller companies get hacked all the time and you will never know as their customer.

not many, because it's a) statistically unlikely that you are involved in any way with a small company and b) the hackers go after prime targets like Sony or Blizzard. Considering these are professional hackers and not some kid pressing a button, the effort would be hardly worth it for some 10 man corp.


The hackers already got what they wanted: 10 million valid email addresses. While it's funny auctioning off some kids WoW characters and/or cause some chaos, you're not making big money with that.

I just wonder if some 1000 personal data which includes bank accounts and cc data wouldn't be interesting for hackers to do some frauds. Especially when they are not from a first world country. I guess smaller companies probably don't invest too much money into security (but don't really know). Our company has no online transactions therefore we don't need such security in the first place.

Do you think it's mostly selling e-mail adresses or "market ressearch" data hackers are looking for? Again I don't know and I'm interested in the subject.

 

[Kane]

I just wonder if some 1000 personal data which includes bank accounts and cc data wouldn't be interesting for hackers to do some frauds.

yes of course it would. but 1000 man corps aren't that visible.

Do you think it's mostly selling e-mail adresses or "market ressearch" data hackers are looking for? Again I don't know and I'm interested in the subject.

personal data and valid email addresses sell, so yeah that's why they do it. just look at what hackers obtained in the big busts over the past few years. market espionage of course happens too, but it's all in the background and not limited to 1337 h4xx0ring anyway.

 

[Vault Dweller]

How do Blizzard know no financial or personally identifying information was compromised, exactly? And was that information stored securely as well, or just passwords?

Gut feeling. Trust them.

 

[Kane]

like you can do anything else

 

[DraQ]

How do Blizzard know no financial or personally identifying information was compromised, exactly? And was that information stored securely as well, or just passwords?

Gut feeling. Trust them.

Gut feeling goes well with bowel movement that's Derpblo 3.

 

[waywardOne]

Hacking corps is just practice for the real targets.

 

[Kane]

the gubbermint

 

[GreyViper]

Funny, but somewhat related, got two spam mails yesterday informing me that my Diablo 3 account is compromised and I should change my password iby hacker provided link.
I guess it might come as a shock, but I dont have a Diablo 3 account nor the game.
My guess is that the hackers also got WoW account information while they had their way with Blizz.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Additional info: http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/important-security-update-faq
Rebuttal: http://www.opine.me/blizzards-battle-net-hack/

 

[DraQ]

Additional info: http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/important-security-update-faq

Why not immediately invalidate the secret questions and answers that were compromised?
This was a difficult decision to make but in the end we believe that keeping the secret questions and answers in place still provides a layer of security against unauthorized users who don't have access to the compromised data. In the meantime, we are working quickly to create a mechanism for players to change the secret question and answer on their account. Our customer service staff will also know to use additional measures to verify player identities and not rely solely on secret question and answer.

Why not immediately revoke the mobile authenticators?
Similar to the decision surrounding secret question and answer, we still believe that keeping mobile authenticators active provides a layer of security against unauthorized users who don't have access to the compromised data. In fact, the mobile authenticator information by itself won't grant access to a Battle.net account -- that still requires the actual password as well. We are working quickly to deploy new mobile authenticator software and will notify players to update as soon as it's available.

So, it's better to leave a wide open access channel bypassing your security for anyone in possession of stolen data, than to risk all those countless people who mistakenly displayed their account login information on public telebims, or maybe got them printed on their t-shirts from being able to quickly reset their passwords.


Edit:

Oh:

Rebuttal: http://www.opine.me/blizzards-battle-net-hack/

So fucked.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Average Manatee]

First I read "Blizzard hacked Emails".

Whatever, I wonder how many smaller companies get hacked all the time and you will never know as their customer.

Smaller companies aren't automatically easier to hack. Sometimes even the opposite. Security really isn't that hard to do right to the point that you need a multimillion dollar budget to accomplish it. The problem is doing it right everywhere so that everything works together. Smaller companies have a large advantage in that they have a smaller attack surface. Large companies only need one thing to slip through the cracks and then you're fucked. All it takes is one guy at Blizzard who was under crunch time trying to fix something and forgot to properly handle dangerous input that he gets from another poorly documented module that was designed by someone else years ago from another country speaking another language. Compare that to a small company where the 1 or 2 IT guys cover everything and are 10 feet apart from each other.