The WoW Authenticator is your friend

And now, a public service announcement from OneOfSwords.

Another friend had his World of Warcraft account hacked this week. The thieves made off with loot from the guild bank as well as his personal gear. The Blizzard support staff was very helpful and informative; they traced the IP to a known Chinese gold farmer. Our stuff is being restored as we speak. But, of course, it sucks to be violated like that, and it’s needless work for Blizzard besides.

Sadly, this is the third person in my very small casual guild to have their account stolen. Each time I have asked them, “Well, you were using the Authenticator, right?” And each time they said, “No.” And then I start yelling obscenities.

The Battle.net Authenticator was created to solve this exact problem. Passwords are flawed because they are created by humans. It’s easy to create a password that is not secure. They can be guessed; they can be cracked with brute force. So, Blizzard created a way to add an extra layer of protection to keep the bad guys at bay. Their weapon in this epic battle: a keychain. Or, better still, a free iPhone/iTouch app or an Android app.

Best as I can figure it out, here’s how I think it works: Every Authenticator features one half of a random number generator. The keychains use six digits; the app uses eight. There’s a big black box somewhere deep within Blizzard that runs the other half of that RNG. No internet or wireless signal is needed; those two RNGs just are forever in love and forever in sync. So when you log into your Battle.net account to play a game, you enter the digits from the Authenticator along with your weaksauce human password. If that RNG matches the RNG on Blizzard’s side, you win. What’s more, there’s a bribe on the table to get you to use the Authenticator. You get a free in-game pet — the Core Hound Pup — as a reward for . He’s cute, in that weird molten-lava-dog way. He does tricks.

The Core Hound Pup

I have been using the Authenticator since it came to iPhone. I have never had a problem with it. It was free. If you don’t have an iPod Touch, iPhone, or Android device, the keychain is cheap — a whopping $6.50 — and the biggest problem is that it’s not in stock as often as people want it to be.

But it works. And since I have now properly chastised my guildmates for not using it, I urge every WoW player reading this to get on board and install the Authenticator right away. Get this going. It will save your account, your guild bank, and your sanity.

This has been a public service announcement from OneOfSwords. Now, back to losing Wintergrasp.