Account Hacking Incident Pt 2

  • Good evening GWL residents! I want to share with you a post that was made on the GW2 forum website that has everything to do with you and your GW1/2 accounts. I am going to copy the entire post here in case Arena Net decides to delete the post.

    Link: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/148…ent-pt-2#latest

    Before I get into the post, if you’d like some context, please visit the original thread where Mike O’Brien had officially released a statement regarding the Gaile Grey hack months ago.
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…acking-incident
    If you can’t be bothered, I will give a brief summary. A well known troll in the Guild Wars 1 PvP community was able to manipulate the support team into giving him access to a GM’s account. He then used the account to manipulate the game and directly affect the players over a period of time due to the slow response from the support and moderation team. Keep in mind that not only was the hacker given complete access to Gaile’s account he was completely able to change the email and personal information under the account. Instances done in this way generally do not notify the user of the breach. The only way for the victim to know they have been breached by an unauthorized user is when they attempt to log on the account or other people noticing odd behavior from the account.
    While Mike had previously stated going further personal information cannot be used to attain access to accounts – that is further from the truth and there have been many breaches on personal accounts. At that time they had received training to prevent moderators to fall prey to these breaches. However, they have left the general population un-secure and not held to the same standards. As a result, loyal players from the Guild Wars 1 & 2 community are at tremendous risk and their items, character progression, and time investment wiped out. Unfortunately, another consequence is defamation, behavior on your account that would be considered irregular or out of character. This means the person can carry out a wide variety of scams or destroy your reputation associated with your account in a matter of hours. And while they may be able to intervene once the damage is done there is no changing everyone’s perception, since they may not know that you were hacked ever. This can directly influence how others treat you in the game. However, I note Guild Wars 2 has a huge player base, so while that may not be the case entirely for that particular game, the Guild Wars 1 player base is much smaller and players are much more familiar with each other and certain names.
    Moving on, a tainted name in Guild Wars 1 is kitten ing as word travels fast and your account may be black listed from participating with the remaining player base in most instances. It does also have the potential to impact your Guild Wars 2 image. The damage done entirely depends on how long the person has access to your account. While you may play regularly not everybody in the world follows that. Casual players or people who do not log on as often are at the greatest risk. That does not mean that the average active player is not as well but these hackings most often go unnoticed for some time.
    I have some high end examples in which I expect the support team to explain or Mike to officially respond in regards to these incidents. The incompetence when considering the support staff is alarming. Your personal information, accounts, and assets are at risk and anybody with free time and small amounts of information on you may gain access to your account by attempting to coerce support into giving them just that. These are not sophisticated methods by any means. And to be fair anybody could carry this out with a little word play and knowing little information of your victim. This is not done by any methods that one would suspect. In all of these cases it was not done by keylogging or using a program to monitor your pc or key strokes. It was done by people with free time and the knowledge of particular assets on your account that they desire or your “reputation” within said game.
    It is important for people to note that if they gain access to your Guild Wars 1 account they can also be given access to your Guild Wars 2 account just as easily. Not to mention having the information completely changed, which as previously stated would delay your time getting back into the account since the abundance of support tickets in circulation. It takes the staff time to investigate the fake requests and the legit requests. And somehow even with this investigation, fake requests are often deemed as legit requests. While you may report your account as hacked it may take weeks to months to gain complete access to your account due to the degree of manipulation and methods used by the person who took the account. The more time the person has to mess with your account the less likely you are to be whole. Mind you in the Guild Wars 1 game if you get hacked, they steal your items, and delete your characters there is no way for them to restore any of this information even thought it was not your fault you were compromised. This tool, per the previous Gaile thead, has not been available since 2012. In cases recently I’ve seen a high end account get taken and have everything deleted on his Guild Wars 1 and 2 account due to the incompetence of the support staff and he is unable to be completely restored whole. He lost exclusive items that are unobtainable and items that were given to him from competing in old events that Guild Wars held. So again this is serious for people who are collectors and have nostalgic assets or progression in their possession. While they were able to restore/rollback his Guild Wars 2 account because of the time allotted, if you are gone for an extended period of time they may be unable to do so if somebody has access to your account for a long time.
    So let’s get into the reference material. Legitimate cases and scenarios that have happened, are happening, and will probably happen again unless this is addressed.
    [font="Cronos Pro Semibold"]Reference 1: Gaile Incident **
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…acking-incident
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…thread-186.html
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…t_taken_over%2F
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…t_got_hacked%2F
    **Reference 2: Three Pounds Hack[/font]

    Leader from Rebel Rising: Hexen can vouch and so can a hand full of other people.
    While I cannot post pictures of this currently because the support team will be investigating this and can confirm in this thread Jackie’s account has been compromised Hexen from rawr can verify this if you message him on Guild Wars 2. The information is currently sensitive; however, is legitimate and will be deemed so shortly. If you are not aware who Three Pounds is she was a 10+ time monthly automated/ and 2-3 $100,000 tournament winners from the team Rebel Rising [rawr]. Her account is associated with arguably one of the top 5 best teams in the game and even to this day that teams legacy has achieved more than any other team in the Guild Wars 1 community. This team was known for creating rawr spike, a defensive spike meta that created an unbeatable American power house. The player who gained access to her account did so with the intentions of getting auto designated in Rebel Rising [rawr] in an effort to take the guild for himself. He would have also planned to boot the original team and taint it’s legacy. An account of this stature further proves that no Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2 account is currently safe with consideration for how absent minded the support team is. All of your hard work and dedication thrown away in an instant because the support team handed over your account to a poser.
    [font="Cronos Pro Semibold"]Reference 3: Motoko Kai[/font]
    (First two pictures reference Motoko’s Hacker scamming a victim out of an item/guild. (Worth a lot! 300-500Arm)
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…m%2FsIJiAKA.jpg
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…m%2FB41JY7F.jpg
    Next two pictures reference motoko’s achievements, exclusive items, and item/guilds. (worth a lot! 1,500 +arms)
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…m%2FvoVx38n.png
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…m%2FxX4FhDB.png
    Motoko Kai’s account was hacked on the Guild Wars 1 servers and his account was/is also considered a high tier account. He had competed competitively and participated in exclusive Guild Wars events that awarded content. This content that only a select few possess and that less than a handful are in circulation. This means particular items that were stolen from his account were worth substantial currency; however, it was worth more to him than currency since it was an event he won and had his name branded on the item and an npc named after him. This item allowed him to appear in game as this character. Now it is in the hands of the hacker who coerced the support team to give him the account. His in game characters and further items were deleted and the names he had were relocated to another account (Another problem with support taking weeks to fix the issue – the hacker has control of the account for more than 24 hours and can take advantage of the name reservation rule). Mind you he had character progression of 11 years worth of on and off time. He had beat the game several times on many of these characters. And further Motoko was and still is regarded as one of the most trustworthy people in the game. The person who took Motoko’s account then also shortly after scammed and stole a large item in the guild wars community, which then led to defamation and a serious question on Motoko’s character. Due to the supports inability to investigate or allot much time into searching into his inquery he was largely defenseless against these accusations since the person went on a spree of misconduct within the game. After a thorough investigation myself I concluded he was innocent once the support staff had FINALLY given him access to his own account, so he could prove his account was stripped clean. His Guild Wars 2 account was also destroyed despite claims by Guild Wars team that you could not get access to Guild Wars 2 accounts from Guild Wars 1 accounts anymore. Motoko has considered legal action and still has those thoughts in mind depending on the response by the support staff or Mike himself. The item that was taken from him was worth about 1500 armbraces on the market but is considered invaluable due to the one of a kind status. This does not include the countless items that were one of a kind rarities valued at over thousands of armbraces. I only put it into terms of monetary value to show it was a lot of currency and had to be gained over time and not something that average player has on hand. Regarding back to GW1 to GW2 not relating to each other that has largely been debunked and now I await a reply from Mike regarding yet again a serious lapse of judgement when considering training methods with the support staff.
    To put in perspective how serious these crimes are consider this: Coercing the support staff to give an account that is not yours is not only theft, it is identity theft and fraud. So serious that when Lynie stole Gaile’s account they reported it to authorities; however, if it’s your account good luck put simply they don’t care about security, your personal information, or your accounts. Unless otherwise stated and they get much more serious about protection of accounts I’d say the hackings will still continue. And by the way there are more we know about and largely a crap ton we don’t. It’s hard for the average player base to know how many accounts the support staff has wrongfully handed over but in all cases it has involved serious consequences for the community or the victim.
    So, I implore you Mike respond to this thread put us at ease and properly compensate the victims for the negligence, progression lost, and items lost due to your team!
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…t_taken_over%2F
    https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/home/leaving?t…t_got_hacked%2F

  • I have been hacked in 2014. My characters were all deleted. Lucky they didn't touch the chests, but I had items worth a bit on the characters. The Guild that I was leading was rebuilt and even had gained a trim...
    No one believed me about people then and I learned through others that they had done it, but could never prove it.

    I do know that sites like here and guru and gwauctions... And maybe the wiki... You're safe with. Except don't leave an email for people to use associated with the accounts on the wiki.
    Anyway, any information more than the character, is vital against you. Most refuse the following for a good reason... Hackers can get your IP via ventrillo, team speak, wiki if not signed in - a biggie, and Skype. Not sure on twitch, steam, etc. However, it's better to be cautious cause any of that can be used against you. I do feel that discord is safe.
    Most other gw sites, don't use.

    For Facebook, do not associate your ign... I see people do this. I am guilty, but it is vulnerable to hackers...
    Just hope they don't get more information than displayed.
    They'd already have your name and character name and it's not that hard unfortunately to find associated email...
    People can let their guard down and boom...
    For me, I have quit leading. Have been asked back, but nope...
    So, just if you play... Do know that not every thing is forever... Wow, you might say.
    I don't let things that's happened to me to be discouraging. Sure, I report. It's not the end of the world. I have rebounded. I know that you can get another account and enjoy the game. Others are going to do what they can to ruin People. I prefer to be honest. I just wish there were better and more trustful mods of any. We do need some in game and I knew that for a long time... Told them several times.
    They need to sue some of these sites for breaches of their legit rules... I know why they don't. Money.
    These sites buy accounts = money. Despite ruining the game. I would rather legit code People fix gw and bring back designers that brings back players. Fix the system, get rid of bots and hackers. There are ways to stop the abuse. Also, ban the ips of known hackers and vpn.
    Botters, hackers, etc. Don't care about anyone or that they ruin the game. I wonder how much ncsoft / anet really cares.

    :heart: By the light of the fire and the sparkle of the stars, you came to realize the meaning of true love. - Lori B. :rit:

    Edited once, last by Ariyen (November 8, 2017 at 12:09 PM).

  • I didn't read all, but they won't do anything.

    Doing something would prove it's their fault, and it won't happen.

    Last year I lost everything and even after months of tickets, their only answer is "We understand.... but we can't do anything. Please be sure to secure your account".
    How the hell I was supposed to secure the 3 accounts I got hacked, I didn't even have access to the emails or the private information for my own account...

    So yeah, for 25k armbraces of items and at least 12k hours deleted (to my fanboys : go ahead you'll make me laugh again <3 )

    The only chance to get his account restored is to be Gaile Gray, but sadly there's only one in the world.

    Edited once, last by Dwadwa (November 8, 2017 at 6:26 PM).

  • Arena Net did admit fault.

    The most alarming part of this is the fact I had the authenticator activated on my account and received no notification. Instead of their customer support simply messaging the email or phone on file - they simply ignored it and changed the entire account.

    Here is the compensation I have been given thus far:
    Ceratadon
    /bonus items (Was advised by the rep I could trade this with other people at will)
    skill unlocks
    2000 GW2 Gems

    Per their exact words to "Alleviate the pain".

    The /bonus is useless, already had it. Skill unlocks? On a 12 year old account? Useless. 2000 Gems for a version of Guild Wars I find pitiful? Useless.

  • I haven't been on Guild wars since 2015, but I remember a lot about this Motoko character. I find it ironic he is playing the victim here. I remember him abusing and ruined a lot of the PvP titles (as you can see in his screen sots, he maxed them illegally).

    German programmers from the Guild Wars1 Hacking Forum known as "GameRevision" in the middle of 2014 was able to reverse the Guild wars client and make their own Injector Client. Using this special client, they could spawn into parts of the game regular users couldn't, for example Team Arenas and Holiday events not during a holiday (such as Costume Brawl). Motoko found out about this guy and befriended him to get his titles maxed. As you can see in the game logs, Motoko maxed his title around August/September of 2014. The custom client was able to do the Gamer/Skill title too, regardless if there was a holiday event present in Guild Wars. If the admins check the logs he maxed the Gamer/Skill title when it was not even possible.

    I don't know why hes begging for his characters back. It appears to me he gave his info out willingly back in 2014. He completely avoids that here and blames Anet for their lack of security, but if you hold your info private there is no problem. This also happened to Gaile Gray, mostly becaause she was a public figure and her info was easily accessable. Motoko on the other hand willing gave his info out for the sole purpose of exploiting his titles. Which is against the Terms of Service Anet makes us agree too.

    Additionally the admins could also verify Motoko in October of 2014 would take advantage of the October Flux system in Pvp where when you die, a Lvl 20 minion spawns. He would go into Codex arena and face 4 alternate accounts he made with 55hp and vampiric weapon so they would die while he AFKs and abuses the Codex title. As you can see in motoko's screen shots he has all but 1 Pvp title maxed. You think this is legit?

    You should be happy you have your account back Motoko and it wasn't locked from all your cheating. If someone can let Mike know motoko's history, would be funny to see what he thinks of this situation.

    Edited once, last by Ger_Man (November 9, 2017 at 8:00 AM).

  • It's been known for a while that the Guild Wars support is quite bad - and unfortunately, there's not much to do about it.

    The only advice I can give is to try and keep your character names secure (for that reason, Legacy does no longer show character names - we used to do that in the past).
    Perhaps you can try to send to support and create a ticket which states that you only want to allow password resets from a certain mail address or when specific information is granted...

    Hi there! I'm the Guild Wars Legacy admin, feel free to contact me if you've got issues.

    :ass: Inquisitor Karinda :der: Sunspear Elke :mes:Librarian Amber

    obey.jpg

  • I will add this to ger. It's not nice to deflame others. Please fix your comment. Otherwise, it makes you appear Immature - just saying.

    :heart: By the light of the fire and the sparkle of the stars, you came to realize the meaning of true love. - Lori B. :rit:

  • I started to write something to explain my thought about Anet but who cares.

    They don't care about the players, they never take their responsabilites when something happen, always the fault of people who pay their bills (us).

    @Ger_Man : nice one son, you made my day. I don't support Motoko, but the fact you took the time to register on the forum and post all your bullshit is very impressive.

    Edited once, last by Dwadwa (November 9, 2017 at 11:09 PM).


  • I started to write something to explain my thought about Anet but who cares.

    They don't care about the players, they never take their responsabilites when something happen, always the fault of people who pay their bills (us).

    @Ger_Man : nice one son, you made my day. I don't support Motoko, but the fact you took the time to register on the forum and post all your bullshit is very impressive.


    I registered here because I did not have an account and I don't think this site was used in 2015.
    I keep in contact with a few old friends I met from Guild Wars. They linked me to this post, "look what motoko wrote a huge article on"
    Personally I haven't been on Guild Wars since 2015 as I am banned for cheating the same titles as Motoko. I accepted my ban and I don't care to appeal it.
    None of what I said was a lie, the admins can verify everything by the timestamps I provided. You can also see in Motoko's screen shot his abused PvP titles.
    Motoko manually synced his Hero, Codex, and Champion title using his alternate accounts to face himself. But to max the Gladiator and Skill title, the creater of the hacked Client would not share it for obvious reasons, so Motoko had to give his account details to the user to farm it for him. If the admins check Motoko's Gladiator title he was maxed in less than 2 weeks time. Because it was used by loading empty instances of Team Arenas (for Gladiator title) and Costume Brawl (for Gamer title).

    Edited once, last by Ger_Man (November 10, 2017 at 12:44 AM).


  • I remember a lot about this Motoko character.

    I do not find it odd you know a lot about Motoko. A lot of people know a lot about Motoko. That seems to happen with people who become obsessed with players who have been considered top players for almost a decade. I find it alarming you and your sad group of friends have a stalking crush on Motoko. The game is old news, I think it is time you grow up and find something to do with your lives. You seriously came on here 3 years later and registered with a website because you are so obsessively infuriated.

    Also, I find it entertaining the hacker group is primarily Germans. Maybe if you had put as much time into practicing your skills instead of cheating the game you might have been able to compete on the same level such as players like Motoko.

    Side note: Titles don't matter. Whether or not he did cheat them it doesn't make him any less of a successful player (He won golds before getting those titles) and I know plenty of guilds who would take him to play regardless.

    Time to stop crying about what you couldn't accomplish. If you want some peanut butter to go with that jelly, let me know.

    P.S. Sorry for the thread derailment - Support is crap for doing that and should be compensating better than what you claim they have done.

  • I do not find it odd you know a lot about Motoko. A lot of people know a lot about Motoko. That seems to happen with people who become obsessed with players who have been considered top players for almost a decade. I find it alarming you and your sad group of friends have a stalking crush on Motoko. The game is old news, I think it is time you grow up and find something to do with your lives. You seriously came on here 3 years later and registered with a website because you are so obsessively infuriated.

    Also, I find it entertaining the hacker group is primarily Germans. Maybe if you had put as much time into practicing your skills instead of cheating the game you might have been able to compete on the same level such as players like Motoko.

    Side note: Titles don't matter. Whether or not he did cheat them it doesn't make him any less of a successful player (He won golds before getting those titles) and I know plenty of guilds who would take him to play regardless.

    Time to stop crying about what you couldn't accomplish. If you want some peanut butter to go with that jelly, let me know.

    P.S. Sorry for the thread derailment - Support is crap for doing that and should be compensating better than what you claim they have done.

    Ok. Firstly, you should know that I have moderator privilege here. Indeed, i am one of the original creators of this site. Therefore i have the ability to IP check posters. Creating additional accounts and posting as a third party to back yourself up isn’t really what we’re looking for here. Please don’t use this site to push your own agendas. History is exactly that, let’s keep it there. We are currently having a discussion at admin level as to whether this thread will be allowed to remain, but creating an alt account just to back your own point up is hardly going to restore a reputation.

    Max.

  • Ok. Firstly, you should know that I have moderator privilege here. Indeed, i am one of the original creators of this site. Therefore i have the ability to IP check posters. Creating additional accounts and posting as a third party to back yourself up isn’t really what we’re looking for here. Please don’t use this site to push your own agendas. History is exactly that, let’s keep it there. We are currently having a discussion at admin level as to whether this thread will be allowed to remain, but creating an alt account just to back your own point up is hardly going to restore a reputation.

    Max.

    Probably best if you dealt with the post first instead of letting it go this far. If you’re going to moderate make sure you do it properly.

  • No moderation has been required thus far, so your point is moot.

    However, as you wish, I am closing this thread now. Perhaps had you taken a different approach to me calling you out instead of attacking my moderation, this wouldn’t have happened.

    Consider yourself moderated.