Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The astounding saga of The War Z continues, but this time, with a twist: the rank odor of awfulness isn’t coming from inside some fissure in the game’s rotting flesh. Rather, an external force – data-hungry hackers – decided to stir up trouble, and boy did it ever hit the jackpot. In short, if you ever signed up for The War Z, go change everything. Financial information, fortunately, is still safe and sound (except, you know, for the fact that it’s presumably being spent on The War Z), but far too many other crucial pieces of information have been compromised. As a result, the more-than-a-little wobbly zombie survivor’s been forced offline for the time being.

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Things haven’t been going so hot for the Lord of the Damned lately. At this point, his rocky start‘s probably better documented than, er, Rocky’s rocky starts, and then that whole hacking thing happened. Granted, somewhere in there, Diablo III also sort of became the fastest-selling PC game of all time, but honestly, millions and millions of dollars can only wipe away so many tears. At any rate, the fallout continues – this time with a second delay for the hellish hack ‘n’ slash’s controversial real money auction house.

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Because the universe loves comedic irony, Diablo III’s online infrastructure specifically put in place to keep out cheaters and hackers is currently being besieged by cheaters and hackers. Yesterday, Blizzard acknowledged the issue, and today, the damage control process has officially begun. From where I’m standing, though, it leaves out one very important step: the part where it, you know, actually solves the problem in the long run. Perplexingly, the multiplayer-loving megalith has opted to calm players by pointing out that account compromises skyrocket with new game releases, ala WoW expansions. Fair enough. But why, again, is it supposed to be reassuring if it keeps happening?

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Earlier in the week John noticed that all Codies websites were pointing at their Facebook pages. But why? Well, Codemasters have been hacked by miscreants. The British company has started contacting affected persons, and the details of that missive are posted below.
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The word “cyberspace” has become a rather prosaic metaphor for all things internet, but it was originally rather more fantastical, being the phrase first conjured by science fiction author William Gibson to describe the networked virtual reality in which the hackers of his Neuromancer/Burning Chrome fiction operated. In Gibson’s space the network architecture was given a Tron-like reality, and hackers and corporations fought for control of information in this electronic realm, or something. The reality of network apps and hacking is rather less interesting, all IP numbers and crappy-looking hacking apps. Or it has been until now. The Centre For Advanced Internet Architectures at Swinburne University, Australia has been using Quake III to visual network architecture. A first step towards actually being able to fight hackers (or our cowled corporate overlords) in Cyberspace?

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