Mobile Armory Hack

Yesterday, a slew of players have reported on the official Blizzard forums that they have lost large amounts of their gold. Apparently this is related to the Mobile Armory that allows players to access their realm's auction house via mobile phone. What has happened is that players are finding that they have made unauthorized purchases on overpriced white-quality items such as Tough Hunk of Bread. Using this type of method paved the way to illegally launder gold to the posting player.

This bread will cost you an arm and leg. 
How much are they taking you wonder? The above white-quality item has been recorded on the Undermine Journal going as high as 136130g. Some players have purchased other similar white-quality items such as a Level 1 axe or even a brawlers pass for 19K gold and upwards.

This mobile armory hack has been officially confirmed via a tweet given at Twitter by Blizzard EU; "The Mobile Auction House is currently down for maintenance. We don't have an ETA yet, but will keep you updated."  There has also been a post at the forums by a Blue that states there is a 'Breaking News' article on the Battle Net website (https://us.battle.net/support/en/blog/10294703/).

Many of these players affected did have Blizzard Authenticators attached to their accounts.

How did it happen?
Apparently what occurred was XSRF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery) attack on the remote AH. A player had to be logged into the armory and visit a website that displayed a malicious ad which triggered the attack.

Prevention methods
To ensure the security of your computer as well as your account it is recommended to check out Blizzard's Security Checklist on their Support Page. (http://us.battle.net/security/)

Have unique passwords for each of your accounts.

Make sure to enable SMS protect to your account. (http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/13/blizzard-increases-security-with-sms-protect/)

Maintain an authenticator on your account.

Make use of an anti-virus program on your mobile phone as well as having an ad blocker such as 'AdBlock Plus' which is a free addon/extension for Chrome/Firefox. It prevents a high portion of  Flash/Javascript ads from running.

What to do if you were affected?
Immediately contact a GM via the ticket system or the live support on the main website. The support team will work to restoring your lost gold. In the meantime it's best to go over the methods of prevention to help stave off any future attacks. Doing these methods will ensure that the chances of this happening again are slim to none.

Thanks for reading,
All My Alts


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