Hacker Attack Brings Down The War Z

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Hacker Attack Brings Down The War Z


The War Z is offline again following an attack by hackers which gained access to email addresses, encrypted passwords and other forum and game-related information.

Controversial zombie shooter The War Z, which false advertising [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122390-The-War-Z-Shambles-Back-to-Life-on-Steam], is down again. This time, however, the developers took the game offline voluntarily following a security breach, which is now under investigation.

"We are issuing this Security Alert to all Survivors as a precaution so you can take some precautionary measures on your own. We have already taken a number of steps to increase security and are continuing to work with external advisors and investigators to identify and implement measures to minimize the chance of this happening in the future," publisher OP Productions said in a statement.

"The data accessed included email addresses used to log-in to the forum, forum passwords which we encrypt, email addresses used to log-in to the game, encrypted game passwords as well as in-game character names and the IP addresses from which players log-in to the forum and to the game," it continued. "If you posted other information to the forum it is likely that such data was accessed as well. We do not collect the names or addresses of our gamers so that information was not impacted unless you posted it on the forum. We are investigating whether additional information may have been obtained."

The good news is that because all payments are made through a third party, OP Productions says there is no possibility that payment or billing information could be compromised. The bad news, of course, is that if you use that same email/password combination everywhere, that combo is now in the hands of someone, albeit presumably encrypted - for whatever comfort that's worth.

The team has engaged "outside experts and investigators" to assist in figuring out what went wrong, and in the meantime has asked all players to change their passwords immediately, which despite the game being down can be taken care of at thewarz.com [http://thewarz.com/].

Source: The War Z [http://forums.playwarz.com/]


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Zero=Interrupt

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Nov 9, 2009
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Couldn't hackers do something cool for once, like install Battlemechs In Day Z, or turn all the zombies into Goombas or something?
 

Shinsei-J

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Apr 28, 2011
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Huh, you know what?
I'm ok with this.
Guess I'm just sadistic when it comes to companies I hate being screwed over.
Feel bad for those unlucky players though.
 

DasDestroyer

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Apr 3, 2010
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While in my opinion the devs got what was coming to them, this only makes it worse for the people who bought War Z(as if that wasn't bad enough), since the 3 people who actually enjoyed it can't even play it anymore, and the rest get to have their accounts compromised.
 

Shinsei-J

Prunus Girl is best girl!
Apr 28, 2011
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DVS BSTrD said:
Shinsei-J said:
Huh, you know what?
I'm ok with this.
Guess I'm just sadistic when it comes to companies I hate being screwed over.
Feel bad for those unlucky players though.
What do you mean? The Hackers stopped them from playing The War Z :p
oh no no, you missed my point.
I felt bad that they were tricked into playing it in the first place.
Those poor souls,.
 

BoredAussieGamer

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Aug 7, 2011
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Well that sucks, and I mean it. I mean, these people were probably fooled into paying for a half assed, shitty game, and now this. Can't these poor users catch a break.
 

Bindal

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May 14, 2012
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BoredAussieGamer said:
Hey, what do you know? Banning people at random didn't do shit.
Reading the article - you didn't do it. Otherwise, you would have noticed that it was not cheating hackers but password-stealing ones...
 

Lono Shrugged

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May 7, 2009
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It's kind of understandable, everything about that game has been such a ham-fisted mess, it stands to reason that their security would be terrible too. No sympathy for the company at all.
 

kajinking

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Aug 12, 2009
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Shinsei-J said:
Huh, you know what?
I'm ok with this.
Guess I'm just sadistic when it comes to companies I hate being screwed over.
Feel bad for those unlucky players though.
The War Z has players?
 

GAunderrated

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Jul 9, 2012
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kajinking said:
Shinsei-J said:
Huh, you know what?
I'm ok with this.
Guess I'm just sadistic when it comes to companies I hate being screwed over.
Feel bad for those unlucky players though.
The War Z has players?
Yes they have many that sadly suffer stockholm syndrome. The poor souls don't even get lube and thank Hammerpoint for it.
 

Absolutionis

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Sep 18, 2008
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Zero=Interrupt said:
Couldn't hackers do something cool for once, like install Battlemechs In Day Z, or turn all the zombies into Goombas or something?
The game affected is WarZ, not DayZ. DayZ is a great mod for ArmA2. WarZ is an awful knockoff that lied to its players, got pulled from Steam and Amazon (temporarily), has a wonky banning pattern, and can't keep cheaters under control.
 

Scorpid

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Jul 24, 2011
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I have a feeling that this company isn't exactly up to date with the latest and greatest in cyber security for their customers.
 

Snotnarok

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Nov 17, 2008
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This really is a horror game...


...a horrible disaster of a game!

I saw a review of the game and it's a pretty big pile of crap made by a scumbag who made Big Rigs Off Road Racing. I'm sure the game has improved a bit since then but these guys aren't interested in making a more balanced game so in the end it's just going to get less balanced and more crap.
 

Tradjus

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Apr 25, 2011
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Yet another reason I'm happy that I gave this game a miss. Something about it smelled funny from the very moment I heard about it, coming -so- very conveniently on the heels of Dayz's success. It was a con artist's rushjob and now that is coming back too bite them in the form of the torn loyalties of the few people who stuck around and kept playing now that their information is in a criminal's hands.
 

Roxas1359

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Aug 8, 2009
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Not G. Ivingname said:
Reason to not buy the War Z #4592346.

Seriously how much worse can this trainwreck get?
I'm sure people said that about Sim City 2013 too, and look what happened with that. XD

OT: Ah I had forgotten about this game. I remember when it first came out and how bad the game truly was. Seeing this makes me glad that I never bought the game.
 

Kenjitsuka

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Sep 10, 2009
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" forum passwords which we encrypt, email addresses used to log-in to the game, encrypted game passwords "

Yeah... there's encryption and then there's a half assed job that's next to useless.
We need more info to get the full idea of it's impact.