Warning: My Account appears to be hacked at this moment

At this writing (12-30-2012 at 02:30 hours CST or 12:30 hours game time) Atheas can see one of my characters logged in game (Kaeleer is the character) and in South Sun Cove. I have a support ticket filed but no ANet reply yet (big surprise).  Just a heads up. I have successfully changed my GW@ password and my support password but the character is still showing logged in. Being "friends" with Atheas he can see it logged in but can't actually find it in South Sun Cove. It shows grouped (he tried to send it a group invite). Just a heads up. In the past week looks like three attempts to log in from foreign countries (country codes CN and then KR) have tried to log in to my account. Getting tired of this. They tried to mess with Atheas' account just over a week ago.

**Edit: Guild Officers please take note: I have no idea what type of guild bank access I have on my account but I don't want them able to get anything out of the guild's bank while I wait for ANet to bump or close the character out of game. Kaeleer is still showing logged in to the game at this writing: 12-30-2012 @ 03:41 a.m. CST, 01:41 a.m. game time)

Sorry you are having to deal with this Kirleen :( I believe everyone has the same access to the guild bank right? Thought I read it somewhere. I could be wrong, I didn't pay close attention to it as I don't generally use the guild bank (unless I am adding to it, which I hope to be able to do soon). Hope they got your account squared away. Edited for clarification: didn't like the way I worded something.

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 06:54:15

Man, I was hoping I wouldn't have to deal with hack attempts any time soon. I wish this weren't a reality you had to face as a gamer. :( I'm sorry to hear that your account was hacked! I hope you get it back soon. I'm sure you'll keep the family updated. <3

Well, the guild bank should be safe since from what I can now tell the "bad guy hacker dudes" have moved my account to freaking Shiverpeaks from Sanctum of Rall. Atheas (hubby) can still see Kaeleer logged in to the durn game but at least since they moved my account from Sanctum of Rall they can't steal anything from the Guild's bank. Support finally replied two hours ago but I was asleep after waiting a couple of hours =( Instead of booting that account out of game to keep any further damage from occurring he can still my Kaeleer character logged in. The frustrating thing is I was/am able to change account password but ANet still hasn't booted that logged in Character offline, the sillies.

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 10:05:12 Edit: I will keep folks in the family update on this. I do find it funny that ANet provides all kind of information on how it's not them that gets hacked so someone got your information another way when in all my years of being online and gaming and we are talking from the very first with Everquest this is the first and only time any account of that I have ever had has been "hacked" in any way, shape or form. I will suggest should you get your ANet GW2 account hacked right off the bat, when you discover it, hop onto the GW2 website and try to change your game password. The "Support" log-in is NOT the same as your GW2 (both game and account on the general GW2 website). I was able to immediately reset my PWs for both the game and the "Support" log-in so that they cannot relog back in of ANet ever does freaking boot Kaeleer out of the silly game. That is how I am seeing that they changed my account to a different "world." I can actually "log in" and get to the character select screen and see what world the characters are assigned to as well has the gear they have on (which is showing the proper gear at the moment) I just cannot actually log a character into the game/world because one is logged in by the hackers at this writing. lol.

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 11:03:05

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 11:07:31

My suggestion to help against what has happened Kirleen and others is to also have longer and harder to figure out passwords including numbers, special characters and capital letters mixed in besides some simple lower cased word so many people rather use due to memory. =) It's also good to change the password even on your games for security. Now you don't have to be crazy about it on games, but I would definitely change it more often with GW2 due to the hacking issues that are causing the account steals.

The one that they hacked was an 11 character password using a combination of letters and numbers with some capitalized letters as well. lol. They did try at least twice on December 8th to get in from I guess China and then this past Friday, the 28th, from I guess Korea (KR). Just wish GW2/ANet could hurry up and get that character logged off the game itself and then get to work on getting my account back to Sanctum of Rall world. heehee

Newest Update, Arena Net/GW2 has totally "failed" on this. They say they see no issue with my account on "their end" and then they reset the password I just reset when I started the ticket. Amazing. They totally ignored that my account has been moved to an entirely different "world" from Sanctum of Rall AND there is still one of my characters logged in. The poor people. lol. No wonder the gold sellers prevail in this game. =/

To kick the account out, login to the account and the same character as the person then back out. The account should log out (it kicked my account out when I logged in on my brother's computer with my account), and the person should not be able to get back in if they do not know the password. An example of one of my very old passwords is: IcntDrv55 My variation of it that is more secure is: @IcntDrv%%13 Same Phrase with symbols and a memorable number added in (13 in this case since the day after tomorrow is the new year).

I gave up on them ACTUALLY doing anything useful with the character logged in from the "bad guy" IP and booted it which doesn't get my account back to Sanctum of Rall world or get any items back or any useful feedback. I updated the support ticket AGAIN explaining AGAIN that they moved my account from my home world of Sanctum of Rall to Far Shiverpeaks and I wanted it back to Sanctum of Rall. Did they do that? Nope. Instead they replied with another password reset wiping out the one I reset yet again and still left me on the wrong homeworld. Amazing. And I gave up on them actually doing anything themselves like checking stuff out that might have been done while they actually were logged in. What you can do yourself (and what I did) is you log in to your GW2 webpage account and when you click on your account and "security" if there is a character logged in it will show the ISP and have a clickable button labeled "Disconnect" so you can log it out via the GW2 web page (not the "Support" web page). I did that. I figured they would do a restore/reset back prior to 12-28-2012 which would/should have cleared out all the stuff gained from botting and put my account back where it should have been on Sanctum of Rall. I will give them a bit of time to do that on their own and if I don't hear from them I will change the home world back to Sanctum of Rall myself. I have all my gear, just have mats the botters had gotten. No major gold gained or anything like that at this point; lost some foods is all and I will just get more from Atheas' cook. lol.

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 19:19:13

Sweep your computer very well with a couple of different AV programs (I suggest also running Norton Power Eraser just because it seeks out rootkits, too), then change your passwords on your email accounts. It sounds like they got into your email accounts. Regardless of whether or not you agree, or if this may not be the problem, be very paranoid whenever you are hacked. Very rarely are hacks due to login server bugs, the major gaming developers hire "whitehat" security experts to bust out any flaws in their account and login servers.

Being an old hand the AV stuff was long ago done now. My only issue is that I have mats in my bag from their having botted with the character. Being a very honest person I figured they would want to do one of their account reset thingies which they can do that put things back to where my inventory was before these creeps hacked in and botted with my lvl 80 character. It is amazing that all they seem interested in doing is resetting my password over and over and the "bad guy hacker dudes" never even reset the password to begin with. Since they moved my account over to Far Shiverpeaks home world to do their botting my "transfer" option is grayed out (you can only transfer worlds once a week) and I think it will also expect me to pay in gems after a weeks which I won't do either. roflol.

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 19:54:08

» Edited on: 2012-12-30 20:25:49

Transfers are free, you'll just have to wait a week. ;)

Ah. Thanks Izzy. Sort of not fair to have to "wait" since I didn't move my account off Sanctum of Rall to the European server to begin with but I have been learning that it can be frustrating dealing with ANet/GW2 Support when you actually do have an issue of hackers/botters getting in to your account. =/

Ugh, sorry to hear you had to go through this. I made sure to do their double security thing so I have to enter a code sent to my phone if I log in to my account from an unrecognized computer. If that's an option for you I'd maybe do that as well, along with changing your e-mail password like mentioned.

I don't have any sort of data plan on my cell phone so this isn't an option for me so the unauthorized log-ins show up in my account linked email. That system works save for the fact I had not actually checked that account that day. heehee

There was an attempt from CN to log into my account. No idea if they succeeded or not as no one I knew would be able to tell me. I changed my password. However I did notice that they have an authenticator option for this game, similar to WoW's. It might be an option to look into. I am thinking of doing that myself too. edited to add the link: https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9238/~/guild-wars-2-two-factor-authentication

» Edited on: 2013-01-05 21:34:55

Its a shame they made changing your email such a pain-in-the-butt. Its well worth the effort to do so, however. If the hackers have your email address, they'll go after not just your game account, but your email account, too. Unfortunately, ArenaNet has forced the gold sellers into taking desperate measures to recoup their losses.