Mass extinction hack hits World of Warcraft

The exploit filled areas of the virtual world with masses of skeletons
Source: WoW Insider

On several servers of the popular massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, players witnesses a mass extinction of player and non-player characters on Sunday. According to WoW Insider, hackers had used an as yet unknown exploit to kill the complete population of the cities Stormwind and Oggrimar. In a thread on Blizzard's official forums, a Community Manager for the game says that the vulnerability used has now been closed and asks users to help the company investigate the incident.

Speaking to the BBC, Olivia Grace from WoW Insider said "we don't know exactly what they did, but somehow they were able to kill every single player's character in that city and every single computer controlled character - and they were doing this repeatedly." Apparently hackers were able to attack the game in a similar manner before, but never at this scale. Players reported seeing virtual skeletons and corpses lining the streets of the affected cities on Sunday. The scene was evocative of the Corrupted Blood incident which took place in 2005, except that the more recent mass extinction was much deadlier and not based on a programming glitch but rather a malicious attack.

Events unfolding in Stormwind

(fab)