Diablo III has been in a slight state of disarray since it came out last week, and not all of it has come from the server issues. Nope, a handful of reports have surfaced of Battle.net accounts being hacked along with Diablo III gold and loot being stolen. Given how strong Blizzard's stance on Diablo III's online-requirement has been, which was intended to provide security, it didn't take long for every single Diablo forum on the net to blow up with discussion.
Rumors have surfaced as a result, and one rumor places blame on a possible glitch where a player can join a recent public game and have access to an account or character. While no evidence has been given to support this claim, Rift suffered from an eerily similar problem that was denied by its developer first before a hacker released details and the issue was addressed through a patch.
Blizzard—being the community-friendly group that they are—quickly dispatched Community Manager Micah Whiple, also known as Bashiok, to do the dirty work. He posted the following on the official Battle.net forums:
Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person's account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password.
It's not much of a surprise that keyloggers and fishing sites have already slammed the web, but what can you do to protect your account? Bashiok added:
While the authenticator isn't a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.
The legitimacy of the hacking claims is hard to determine, but you're better safe than sorry. Make sure you use an authenticator, whether through a Battle.net authenticator device or the mobile version, if you want some defense. Secondly, don't share your account information with anyone you don't trust. I don't trust anyone so if I die my password is coming with me. Lastly, be careful which sites you visit and which e-mails you open. It doesn't take much to accidently enter your credentials on a fake site or download a keylogger from a link.
In the coming days it's likely that Blizzard will have another public announcement which will address the reports of accounts being stolen. Until then remember that the internet is out to get you, so play smart.
