WatchGuard Wire
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New virus empties WoW players' coffers
How can you tell when your multiplayer online game has achieved critical success? When it's popular enough for a virus author to target its players with a complicated trojan that not only steals a player's account password, but also gains control of his lovingly and painstakingly created online avatar, and auctions off its virtual possessions for real-world profit.
According to IT Observer,
Trojan-PSW.Win32.WOW.x (or just Win32.WOW) targets the players of the extremely popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called World of Warcraft (WoW) and tries to steal their WoW password. The WoW trojan has quickly spread via email, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, and from popup windows served up by shady computer gaming sites. If you download and run the trojan, it sends your WoW password to the trojan's author so that he can access your WoW character and sell all your hard-earned treasures. If you've played WoW for innumerable hours (like some of my friends), this attack could emotionally devastate you.
Normally, I don't warn about game-related security vulnerabilities. While network game vulnerabilities potentially present the same danger as any other software vulnerabilities, most administrators don't allow games on their office network. However, World of Warcraft is one of those games that is just popular enough to be the exception. If you don't play WoW yourself, I'll bet you at least have one or two friends who do (and won't stop talking about it). If so, warn your friends about this virus and remind them not to download anything from people they don't really trust. -- Corey Nachreiner, CISSP
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