World of Warcraft screenshots contain account details

[Guild McCommunist]

MMO giant World of Warcraft's screenshot function may be showing off more than your sick gear or your massive raids, according to a discovery by a group of gamers at OwnedCore.

Posters at gaming forum OwnedCore have found that each screenshot from the game contains your account name, timestamp, and IP address of the server the image was taken on. This technique, known as steganography, hides a secret watermark into each image which contains all this info. It's not physically visible, but digitally, it's there.

The data doesn't include your password, credit card number, or mother's maiden name by any means, but can still lead to the compromising of some accounts and servers. The function however is presumably to catch pirates using private or illegitimate servers who decided to post their screenshots up.

Screenshots containing this info date all the way back to 2008, around the time of the Activision-Blizzard merge. Fortunately players can now use a few tricks to make sure their information isn't compromised. High quality screenshots, performed by using the '/console SET screenshotQuality "10"' command, or using a third party screenshot tool, will make sure this information doesn't float around the web.

Blizzard hasn't commented on the matter yet, but surely they are to get an icy reception when they do.

Source

 

[Hyro-Sama]

I guess giving WoW the cold shoulder was a good decision.

 

[Clarky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJxCdh1Ps48

Says a lot about Blizzard nowadays.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Is nintendo blizzard doomed?

 

[shakirmoledina]

What is someone going to do with your ip address and account name? Don't people share that when they play on lan or similar?

 

[Zarcon]

What is someone going to do with your ip address and account name? Don't people share that when they play on lan or similar?

Most "hacked accounts" cases aren't from people hacking the game, but from people lifting account/email/passwords from other places such as forums and fansites.
A vast majority of people use the same account/email/password combination everywhere they go.

Simply knowing an account name is enough to search through such a lifted list of information and checking if it works.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

To avoid the hassle of alt-tabbing out every time you want to take a screen shot. When I would raid, I would occasionally take screen shots during it; alt tabbing out to paste each one into Paint would be a major pain in the ass, whereas the built in function writes it directly to disk.

In other words - convenience.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

To avoid the hassle of alt-tabbing out every time you want to take a screen shot. When I would raid, I would occasionally take screen shots during it; alt tabbing out to paste each one into Paint would be a major pain in the ass, whereas the built in function writes it directly to disk.

In other words - convenience.

And that's why I played in windowed mode.

 

[MasterPenguin]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

To avoid the hassle of alt-tabbing out every time you want to take a screen shot.  When I would raid, I would occasionally take screen shots during it; alt tabbing out to paste each one into Paint would be a major pain in the ass, whereas the built in function writes it directly to disk.

In other words - convenience.

And that's why I played in windowed mode.

Playing windowed mode you'll still need to minimize...LOL

 

[shakirmoledina]

What is someone going to do with your ip address and account name? Don't people share that when they play on lan or similar?

Most "hacked accounts" cases aren't from people hacking the game, but from people lifting account/email/passwords from other places such as forums and fansites.
A vast majority of people use the same account/email/password combination everywhere they go.

Simply knowing an account name is enough to search through such a lifted list of information and checking if it works.

Then again, it is not a mistake from blizzard but lack of taking security measures (i.e. having different passwords) from the player's side. Then again, don't share what you don't need to.

 

[Gahars]

It's like a flurry of puns in here. Jeez, guys, just chill.

 

[Janthran]

It's like a flurry of puns in here. Jeez, guys, just chill.

Stop trying. Just go back to your legit science stuff k?

 

[Deleted-236924]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

To avoid the hassle of alt-tabbing out every time you want to take a screen shot.  When I would raid, I would occasionally take screen shots during it; alt tabbing out to paste each one into Paint would be a major pain in the ass, whereas the built in function writes it directly to disk.

In other words - convenience.

And that's why I played in windowed mode.

Playing windowed mode you'll still need to minimize...LOL

If you minimize, you're doing it wrong.
Horribly wrong.

 

[Heran Bago]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

You really don't see why anyone should press F12 when they could press PrntScrn, Alt+Tab, WinKey, P, A, I, Enter, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+S, Enter, Alt+Tab?

Really?

 

[MasterPenguin]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

To avoid the hassle of alt-tabbing out every time you want to take a screen shot.  When I would raid, I would occasionally take screen shots during it; alt tabbing out to paste each one into Paint would be a major pain in the ass, whereas the built in function writes it directly to disk.

In other words - convenience.

And that's why I played in windowed mode.

Playing windowed mode you'll still need to minimize...LOL

If you minimize, you're doing it wrong.
Horribly wrong.

Have fun with your mouse going off the screen then.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Why anyone would choose not to use PrntScrn, I have no idea.

To avoid the hassle of alt-tabbing out every time you want to take a screen shot. When I would raid, I would occasionally take screen shots during it; alt tabbing out to paste each one into Paint would be a major pain in the ass, whereas the built in function writes it directly to disk.

In other words - convenience.

And that's why I played in windowed mode.

Playing windowed mode you'll still need to minimize...LOL

If you minimize, you're doing it wrong.
Horribly wrong.

Have fun with your mouse going off the screen then.

I still fail to see the problem with keeping a mspaint instance opened alongside WoW and clicking on its icon on the taskbar whenever you need to copy a screenshot.

 

[Gahars]

It's like a flurry of puns in here. Jeez, guys, just chill.

Stop trying. Just go back to your legit science stuff k?

Ouch. I wasn't expecting such an icy reception.

 

[Vampire Lied]

Inb4blizzardupdatesuseragreement
All they would really have to do is put it in their user agreement that said info will be attached to any screenshot taken with their built in screenshot ability/button/thingy.
Just another reason I'm glad to have never gotten into this game. So much bullshit and drama over one game. I'll stick to my non massively multiplayer games thank you.

 

[Forstride]

Did any of you even read the article? (Yeah, right. GBAtemp members using their brains? HAH!)

The info contains your user name, the time the screenshot was taken, and the IP of the SERVER you are on. Not YOUR IP address.

This is really, really clever actually, as it can help with taking down hackers and other rule breakers who take screenshots of whatever they did. Say someone has hacked items, and takes a screenshot to brag about it. Blizzard can check what their username is, what server they play on, etc. It also helps to find private servers so Blizzard can get them taken down.

Oh who am I kidding? Feel free to resume the anti-Blizzard circlejerk!