Why Anyone Would Want to Steal 44 Million Game Accounts
This week, Symantec reported its discovery of a veritable thieves horde: a server holding the login info of 44,000,000 stolen MMORPG accounts. After surveying a few websites, Symantec came up with a range of values for the data on the server, capping out at around $30,000.
If you’re not a regular online gamer, you may be wondering why game accounts are so valuable. At the very least, you might be wondering why someone would go to the trouble of grabbing the log in info for so many accounts that they have to craft a unique program simply to figure out which ones still work.
As a regular World of Warcraft player with account security on the brain, allow me to give you a brief explanation.