Symantec Uncovers Cache of 44 Million Stolen Gaming Accounts
World of WarCraft and Aion among those with compromised accounts.
By Kat Bailey, 05/27/2010
Symantec has discovered a cache containing some 44 million stolen gaming accounts, including thousands from World of WarCraft and Aion.
The anti-virus developer wrote in a recent blog entry that the server contains some 17GB worth of stolen data, likely obtained from sites using programs like Infostealer.Gampass.
In order to verify whether the login data is valid, they are apparently distributing a threat known as Trojan.Loginck to multiple computers, which then begins trying to login using the stolen account data. If it's successful, it logs the time on the database along with the valid username and password combinations, then moves on.
Sympantec uncovered around 210,000 World of WarCraft accounts in the database, with an online market value of between $35 and $28,000. By far the largest number of accounts are from Chinese distributor Wayi Entertainment, with roughly 16 million.
Symantec recommends you keep your virus definitions up to date to avoid having your account compromised. It probably wouldn't hurt to change your passwords from time to time as well.
Source: 1up.com
