So a bunch of you were on last night when I returned from work to find my toon standing naked in front of the General Goods guy in Sanctum. (Well, technically I had underwear. And frankly, I wish I had abs like that in real life.)
I'm hoping the GM's will do something, but I'm going to not try to restore things until I find out if they are willing to do a roll back. In the end, I don't even think the hack was effective because while they sold everything, they left me with 20+ plat. Perhaps because of the coin lock thing? Not sure. But in any case, it's a major hassle and very disappointing.
Anyway, the main reason I am posting is because I may have figured out how they are getting in, and wanted to caution folks. I am 99.9% sure this was a server side hack, or at least an intercept hack.
If you are in game and you are AFK too long, you will eventually pop out of the game and have a message that says you've been disconnected, would you like to reconnect. When you reconnect, you are not asked to re-enter your password. I believe that hackers are exploiting this security weakness and essentially intercepting this open opportunity to connect. Not sure exactly how the mechanics work, but I have some circumstantial evidence to suggest this is the issue.
1- Forums posts on the Rift site leave some clues about this
2- My son was playing a few days ago, had this happen to him. When he came back to the computer he hit the reconnect and said that it gave him a message that someone was already logged into his account. It then terminated that session and allowed him to reconnect. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, but in hindsight, I believe he was about to be hacked and probably came back just in time. BTW, I don't believe it's a password theft because his account has been fine since then and he never changed his password.
3- Monday night (before I was hacked), I was logged in, but tabbed out doing one of my weekly LOTRO raids. I am 99% certain that during one of the fights, I left Rift on and never came back to it. Thereby leaving my account open to the attack. I finished my LOTRO raid, and because it was late, I never came back to Rift. Then I log on Tuesday night and, poof, they steal the clothes off my back.
So I wanted to post this. Even though it's speculation I would advise people to be careful about this issue and not let the game auto-termnate your connection. I'm telling my son to make sure he always logs out of the game from now on.
I suspect that if this is truly the case, we will see this feature be changed soon and they will require you to re-enter your credentials to log back in.
Best to all
~ Pax
I'm hoping the GM's will do something, but I'm going to not try to restore things until I find out if they are willing to do a roll back. In the end, I don't even think the hack was effective because while they sold everything, they left me with 20+ plat. Perhaps because of the coin lock thing? Not sure. But in any case, it's a major hassle and very disappointing.
Anyway, the main reason I am posting is because I may have figured out how they are getting in, and wanted to caution folks. I am 99.9% sure this was a server side hack, or at least an intercept hack.
If you are in game and you are AFK too long, you will eventually pop out of the game and have a message that says you've been disconnected, would you like to reconnect. When you reconnect, you are not asked to re-enter your password. I believe that hackers are exploiting this security weakness and essentially intercepting this open opportunity to connect. Not sure exactly how the mechanics work, but I have some circumstantial evidence to suggest this is the issue.
1- Forums posts on the Rift site leave some clues about this
2- My son was playing a few days ago, had this happen to him. When he came back to the computer he hit the reconnect and said that it gave him a message that someone was already logged into his account. It then terminated that session and allowed him to reconnect. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, but in hindsight, I believe he was about to be hacked and probably came back just in time. BTW, I don't believe it's a password theft because his account has been fine since then and he never changed his password.
3- Monday night (before I was hacked), I was logged in, but tabbed out doing one of my weekly LOTRO raids. I am 99% certain that during one of the fights, I left Rift on and never came back to it. Thereby leaving my account open to the attack. I finished my LOTRO raid, and because it was late, I never came back to Rift. Then I log on Tuesday night and, poof, they steal the clothes off my back.
So I wanted to post this. Even though it's speculation I would advise people to be careful about this issue and not let the game auto-termnate your connection. I'm telling my son to make sure he always logs out of the game from now on.
I suspect that if this is truly the case, we will see this feature be changed soon and they will require you to re-enter your credentials to log back in.
Best to all
~ Pax
Last edited:
