14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers from Trend Micro warn that World of Warcraft players are being targeted through the game's internal mail system by phishers looking to steal their Battle.net credentials.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is the world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), with over 11.5 million users, who pay a monthly subscription.
The game is developed by Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, which is also responsible for other highly popular game franchises like Starcraft or Diablo.
Since 2009, WoW players have been using accounts for the company's online service called Battle.net in order to play the game.
WoW has both an in-game chat and an internal mail system, which allows users to communicate with each other.
Rogue chat messages (whispers) have been used to direct players to phishing pages for a while now, but Trend Micro researchers warn that attackers are increasingly impersonating game administrators.
The messages attempt to scare users into thinking that there is something wrong with their account and they risk getting suspended unless they log into a website and perform a special action.
However, the mail system has also begun being abused by phishers. "In this new trickery, the phishing URLs are sent via WoW in-game mail and is received by players in their in-game mailboxes," Menard Osena, solutions product manager at Trend, warns.
"The mail message is full of a mix of surprises. It combines several elements from other Blizzard games. […] To add to its credibility, the phishing URL contains the string worldofwarcraft and an abbreviation of Cataclysm," he explains.
Online gaming credentials are valuable for cybercriminals, who sell them on the black market for profit. They even perfected automated systems that build lists with game characters stats for the stolen accounts.
This is important, because prices vary significantly depending on how well a game character is developed. According to research from Symantec, WoW accounts can be sold for anything between $35 and $28,000.