Well after being a fanatic of the World of Warcraft for about 3 years now I can safely say I have never been hacked nor have I been duped in anyway... until 2 days ago. To be honest the odds are pretty good as when researching for this article the majority of people actually have been hacked several times in succession, one poor bloke was done 3 times in a year.
So What happened? Well I lost all of my gear (equipment/armour) and was left with just the shirt on my back and some items that I had won from honour points. Thankfully I managed to recover a few items that they had tried to sell on the AH but nothing really of value like armour, etc.From the looks of this I don't think I'll be winning any wars anytime soon more likely to be done for flashing.
So with that shaking me up a little I decided that I needed to secure up my rig, something which in recent times I had become a little slack in doing.
OBJECTIVE
To switch from Vista x86 to Vista x64 and secure up my system with Anti-Virus, Firewall and spyware/malware protection.
SOFTWARE REQUIRED
I did a little research and found 4 of the best FREE programmes out there for Vista x64 to over me the very best in protection.
- avast! Anti-Virus - LINK - An excellent and totally free antivirus that has seen some of the best reviews. Really easy to use just install and away you go.
- Spybot-S&D - LINK - Another freeware program that helps protect your system from nasty invasions of spyware and malware.
- COMODO Firewall Pro - LINK - Still free but you have to install one of those search bars in IE and Firefox however you can just switch them off inside the browser and it will still work fine.
- SpywareBlaster - LINK - Again a spyware killer that is top spec.
STEP ONE
So with all that software downloaded on to a USB Flash Drive, all my required drivers downloaded and all my files backed up I wacked in the Vista x64 cd and rebooted.
The one thing I love about Vista as it has such a seemless install process, once you haev set a few options it just goes off on its own and does its thing.
STEP TWO
Once fully installed the first step should be to install the hardware drivers. This normally takes a few reboots depending on your rig so bare with it.
Once that is complete its time to install the firewall software then the antivirus followed by the rest.
CONCLUSION
There wasn't that easy, once you have installed all the windows updates your system will be tight as a nun's bum.
From what i found out Warcraft Gold websites contain a great deal of keyloggers and adware that pick up your usernames etc from when you enter them into the Account Management system. Although Blizzard are now introducing the "Blizzard Authenticator" its too little too late in my case and for many others like me too. However lets hope that the Blizzard site that tells us more about these comes online again soon as I think I would like to get my hands on one.
