Diablo 3 Auction House exploit allowing users to buy anything for next to nothing

Now before we begin on this news bit, we understand that the exploit has been around for more than a day. With an unscheduled maintenance already taken place over the last few hours and with many facing horrible lag to the server at this moment, the reason for all this is due to Blizzard trying to fix a seemingly simple exploit that allows hackers to buy items on the Auction House for almost next to nothing.

The concept to the exploit is quite simply grandma-nodding-simple; buying an item at its bidding price instead of the buyout price.

Say for example I’m going to sell a Prestige Slayer Rare Amulet on the auction house. I set the initial starting bid at 1 million gold simply because I’m feeling ignorantly generous, but being the hopeful douche that I am, I set the buyout price at 10 million gold. The hacker sees my amulet and decides to use  the exploit. After a few shadowy tinkering behind his monitor and nasty keyboard, he buys my amulet for a mind numbingly — 1 million gold. I start slamming anything I see because I know the amulet is obviously worth more than a million peanuts.