m00t wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 19:22:That would be my guess as well. It's a rather smart move on Blizzard's part; this must have made it very easy to ID hackers, leakers, etc. I just hope this isn't the only such tool in Blizzard's chest, as otherwise it's going to suck if they've lost their primary way of IDing violators.
It was probably used to identify people breaking NDA for WOTLK. According to TFA it first showed up in early WOTLK alpha builds.
Beelzebud wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 13:38:
Good way for them to smoke out private servers... Pretty sneaky shit.
jdreyer wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 15:37:Wait, what? Adding internal private IP addresses was causing a security problem? You must have left out some information there, having internal and external IPs especially on webservers is pretty standard.
At work, we had been adding internal IP addresses of our public facing pages to make it easier to troubleshoot stuff (figure out which webserver was having the trouble, since they're all behind a loadbalancer), but stopped this practice recently due to the security risks.
Beelzebud wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 13:38:Considering the VAST numbers of private servers available ... Blizzard is either doing a bad job, or they are not interested in pursuing those servers or this is hoax.
Good way for them to smoke out private servers... Pretty sneaky shit.
NKD wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 13:40:Yeah, they'll never realise we're on to them and adapt. Our secret is safe!
Clever, but easily defeated now that people know its there.
Verno wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 12:47:
I can understand their motivation in wanting to catch hackers who posted screenshots to websites and whatnot. That said, it seems like a big security risk to attach the account info to something that's posted publicly. I'm sure there is a general ToS clause that covers their ass but it still seems pretty dumb.
Apparently you can defeat it by using a different screenshot quality or compression method.
necrosis wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 12:56:Nope, it's definitely a watermark. If you click the link on Slashdot and read through the whole thread, you'll get a lot more info.
Probably just EXIF data.
necrosis wrote on Sep 11, 2012, 12:56:
Probably just EXIF data.