14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has confirmed that the Auction House in its World of Warcraft online game has been hacked, with lots of accounts being broken into, even those with authenticators, thanks to an exploit with the mobile Armory application.
World of Warcraft's popularity has decreased in recent years and now a new scandal has erupted, after the company has confirmed that the game's Auction House had been hacked by nefarious individuals who made lots of unauthorized transactions using a bug in the mobile armory app.
The exploit allowed the hackers to take control of many legitimate accounts and spend the in-game gold on worthless items on the Auction House, basically engaging in money laundering.
"There’s been a recent increase in unauthorized World of Warcraft account-logins via our website and the World of Warcraft mobile armory app," Blizzard said on its website.
"We’re in the process of notifying any account holders who were not using an authenticator and whose account showed signs of unauthorized access (e.g., logging in from an unusual IP address). If you are among this group, you will receive an email describing how to reset your account."
Because the exploit was found within the World of Warcraft mobile armory application, access has been taken offline temporarily while Blizzard's teams are investigating the issue.
"While no means of account security is guaranteed, every precaution you take to secure your computer and your account—including changing your password periodically—adds another defensive barrier."
Sadly, it seems that even World of Warcraft accounts who had Blizzard Authenticators attached to them were hacked, as quite a few players are reporting missing gold from their game, despite using all the different security methods outlined by Blizzard.
As of yet, no other details are known about the exploit or how Blizzard is making amends over this serious security issue.