Account stolen

TheRaven

TheRaven

Member
My account was stolen today. I got an auto-email from NCSoft that someone reset my password. I can no longer access the account and I'm pretty sure once I get it back that all my stuff will be gone.

I took a break today and didn't play at all. I wish I had now. Perhaps I could have caught it sooner.

I'd really like to know how it was stolen. My password is unique to GW and not easily guessed. I don't visit cheat sites and I have full virus protection on this PC. I can only guess that the NCSoft master account was hacked and stolen that way.
 
I don't think I can get it back. NCSoft support wants the details for the master account and I never knew those details. It was created automatically for me when I shopped in the online store. I've sent them an email but i can't logon to the NCSoft site.

I'd love to know how all these accounts are stolen thru the master accounts.
 
I'm with Ursen.

My wife Angie said she would help out to. We don't have a lot but would be glad to help you get back on track once things are settled.

As strange as it may sound we're praying for peace for you. Having something taken from us can be difficult.
 
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TheRaven said:
I don't think I can get it back. NCSoft support wants the details for the master account and I never knew those details. It was created automatically for me when I shopped in the online store. I've sent them an email but i can't logon to the NCSoft site.

I'd love to know how all these accounts are stolen thru the master accounts.
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When your NCsoft master account was created you should have gotten an email from support@plaync.com or support@ncsoft.com if not, try contacting support about the account name and password of your master account first.

EDIT: If you have the serial keys that came with your copies of games on your account (in other words, Guild Wars) it will help a lot in recovering your account.
 
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Update:

I've contacted NCSoft and received the standard form reply. They want my name, address, keycodes, and credit card used on the account. I've given them what I have but unfortunately GW was the first online game I ever played and at the beginning I didn't realize i needed to save those keycodes. I have Eotn and NF codes, but that's it. In the past they've said they need all 4 codes or no deal. We'll see what happens this time.

They have said they'll place a block on the account until it's resolved, but I doubt that helps my characters much at this point.

My account was hacked from a Washington DC ip address. I googled the address and found many other forum and wiki posts complaining of being hacked from the same address. The ones that have recovered their accounts say it was wiped clean but the characters were not deleted. That's encouraging. I've always said that GW is playable with very little wealth. Max armor and max weapons are cheap. My 2nd account isn't wealthy but I can transfer probably about 50k over to get armor and weapons for my Rit and start farming up some wealth.

I had millions in ectos and quite a few Z keys that i hadn't gotten around to using yet. I hate to lose all that but most of the important items are in the HoM. I really wanted to finish that off with a perfect 50 too. I think i'll mostly be farming Granite and iron to try and get some destroyer weapons.

Geez, I hope my progress tomes are still there. There's no reason to steal those and I'll need them to complete some of the titles. I had Factions books started on most characters and the Eye of the North dungeon books were close to being turned in.
 
TheRaven said:
Update:

I've contacted NCSoft and received the standard form reply. They want my name, address, keycodes, and credit card used on the account. I've given them what I have but unfortunately GW was the first online game I ever played and at the beginning I didn't realize i needed to save those keycodes. I have Eotn and NF codes, but that's it. In the past they've said they need all 4 codes or no deal. We'll see what happens this time.

They have said they'll place a block on the account until it's resolved, but I doubt that helps my characters much at this point.
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If they cannot resolve it and 3 working days have passed you can try contacting Gaile via the wiki, hopefully however 2 out of 4 keys will be enough.
 
TheRaven said:
My account was stolen today. I got an auto-email from NCSoft that someone reset my password. I can no longer access the account and I'm pretty sure once I get it back that all my stuff will be gone.

I took a break today and didn't play at all. I wish I had now. Perhaps I could have caught it sooner.

I'd really like to know how it was stolen. My password is unique to GW and not easily guessed. I don't visit cheat sites and I have full virus protection on this PC. I can only guess that the NCSoft master account was hacked and stolen that way.
Click to expand...

your machine has been compromised. a/v won't stop the rootkits out there that leverage ie to bypass everything including any a/v. That sucks your account got stolen...my standard advice(while unpopular) applies as it's the only way to know for sure your system is clean.
 
Here's a link to an article containing tools and directions how to make sure your machine is clean. I don't use the online panda scan or kill box but everything else works well.
 
Good news Raven granite and steel I have lots of, let me know, out of paranoia I changed my pass last night. Praying too. God is concerned about our whole life, that which affects us in anyway so let Him have the anger and frustration.
 
GOOD NEWS!!!!!!!!!

I got my account back this morning. I must say that for all the gripes we have with NCSoft support, they do indeed work fast.

Best of all, nothing is missing. All my items, armor, weapons, money, ecto is still there. I was hoping that would be the case. I spoke with Fire Walker earlier and she said my account hadn't been logged in since Saturday evening.

I know Guru had a breach in their security and they said forum usernames and passwords were stolen. My biggest flaw is that my master account had the same password as guru. I didn't think that was the case, but my "password hint" that was set up at NCSoft points that direction. I think the hacker attempted to access my guild wars account and was blocked by the Character Name requirement. I haven't posted my ingame name on Guru in years.

God protected me and Raven. See he cares even about the little things in life.
 
I hope you are going to write this up for the rest of us. How did it happen - what steps you took - who you contacted - what documentation you needed - all of it.

Inquiring minds want to know.
 
LOL, I can only guess how it happened. I saw HesComingSoon's post and while I agree that computer security is very important, I can guarantee you my PC is clean. I never download anything that is the least bit suspicious and I have a strong firewall up and running. I remember once going to the GW Wiki and my firewall popped up and shut down my browser. There was a virus in one of the flash ads. And yes, I ran a thorough scan last night. I'm clean. :D

(....to the doubters, if I wasn't clean then both my GW accounts would have been taken and probably the RS account as well. They wouldn't have attacked the NCSoft account that I never use........)


About a month ago, GuildWarsGuru was hacked. :( They had an announcement about it stickied on every page there for awhile but they've since taken it down. They said they didn't think the hackers made off with any passwords but they weren't sure and advised everyone to change their GW Account passwords if you used the same password at Guru.

Regardless, using the same password for a game account and that game's fan forum is HIGHLY UNWISE. A game company's servers usually have a very high level of security and are considered as "hack proof" as it is possible to be in today's society. Fan forum on the other hand are generally extremely hackable. The average fan forum doesn't have a highly qualified staff of computer experts. Guru has a staff, but not a big budget and they take as many precautions as they can. In comparision, our TOJ forum here is highly vulnerable to attacks if a gold seller company decided to come after us and steal the account names and passwords here. We only have a handful of gw players though and there is no guarantee that any TOJ forum passwords match our game account passwords. In other words, we aren't a profitable target for hackers looking to steal accounts. Guru though has thousands of gw players registered and if only 50-100 of them used the same password, it would still be a huge gain of accounts for the thieves.

My gw account has a unique strong password so I wasn't worried when i saw the announcement. :rolleyes: I didn't even think about the NCSoft Master Account. I don't remember even setting up a master account even though I knew I had at some point in the past in order to access the ingame store. I've never used it and didn't know the password until I tried to recover it last night. The "password hint" I had set up on their site told me it was the same password that I had used for guru. :eek:

The thieves had my guru password and used it to steal the NCSoft master account. NCSoft's security basically sucks. If you have the master account you can reset the passwords on all NCSoft games linked to it. You don't have to know the current passwords for the games or provide any kind of account verification. It resets the password and sends an auto-email to the account holder saying the password was reset. That e-mail however doesn't contain the new password. :(

That e-mail came to me yesterday morning at 10am. Unfortunately I didn't log in at all yesterday and didn't see the e-mail until about 10:30 last night. At that point I tried to log into guild wars and couldn't. :( I immediately replied to support@ncsoft.com and told them I didn't do the password reset and my account was stolen.

They replied within a half hour. (Yeah, 11pm on a Sunday night. I'm impressed i got a reply that fast!!!) They said they locked the account so no one could access it, however most thieves will clean out an account within 5 minutes so I didn't figure that would help. They asked for my real name, address, Birth date, any credit card #s used in the ingame store and all the keycodes on the account.

I called Fire Walker this morning and gave her the bad news. We chatted for a bit and she said when she played last night, the guild roster said I hadn't been logged in for 21 hours. That was around 8pm and that means my account hadn't been accessed since 11pm Saturday night. That's when I finished FoW and logged out. For the first time, I felt it was possible that my account was secure after all.

I replied this morning to NCSoft and gave them everything except the keycodes. I had 2 of them but the others are lost. Within an hour they replied and reset my master account password and unlocked the gw account. I was able to login to the master account and change that password as well as reset the password on the gw account.

When I logged in everything was there. I almost expected a wiped account and naked characters. I googled the ip address that the e-mail said reset the password. I found posts by others that have had their accounts taken. Everything was wiped clean but the characters remained.

I'm guessing that the thieves couldn't get past the Character name requirement on the login screen. My ingame name is posted on guru, but it's buried in posts that i made a few years ago. I have not revealed my character names there recently.

Whew!!!! Still reading?? Yeah, I know i can be long-winded at times. I minored in creative writing in college (at least until i learned that meant endless research papers and no "fun" writing).

God protected my account and He gave the developers wisdom to add the character name security. I see a lot of kids griping about that when they try to return to the game after leaving for a few years, but I think it helps more than it hurts.
 
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