NEWS: Blizzard's Privacy Invasion

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NEWS: Blizzard's Privacy Invasion

Postby Shindy » Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:45 am

In an attempt to stop the sharing of Blizzard's games, they have adviced a new attack to stop illegal program sharers from reaching Battle.net.

Quote from Battle.net Anonymizer from raz0r 1911 a.k.a. the most famous online piracy organization.

It has come to my attention (via a few friends on IRC, whose names I have
forgotten), that during any failed Starcraft BATTLE.NET connection
(i.e. you have an invalid CD-Key), some sensitive information is (illegally)
retrieved from your registry and sent up to Blizzard. This only seems to
occur the first time you connect using an invalid key, but not afterwards.
I have personally confirmed this using socket traces.

As of the writing of this document, 6 registry keys in particular are
checked and sent back to Blizzard, who obviously hope to collect names and
e-mail addresses of those who attempt "invalid" connections to BATTLE.NET.
These 6 keys are:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MS Setup (ACME)\User Info\DefName
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Mail and News\Mail\Sender Name
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Netscape Navigator\User\User_Name
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Mail and News\Mail\Sender EMail
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\User\User_Addr
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Kali\Kali95\User Info\email

Blizzard has the ability to change which registry keys are checked at any
time, but currently only these 6 are checked. I would advise doing a "Find"
operation in REGEDIT and removing any traces of your real e-mail and name.

To combat this outright "invasion" of your computer privacy, I have coded
a small program that will make your computer "anonymous" by setting these
6 registry keys to anonymous values. (Setting the names to Ben Dover and
downloading@this.info.is.illegal.com, in particular). Just run BNETANON.EXE
to display your current settings and click YES to "anonymize" them. Any
settings that show up as "<not defined>" have never been created, so you
don't need to worry about them.

Can't believe that Blizzard would do such a thing? Do the socket trace
yourself: go to http://www.win-tech.com, download Socket Spy/32, and
register it using the following codes:

Name=Beowulf
Company=RAZOR 1911
Code=OHJGH3LNLKM3O372 (note that all the O's are the letter O, not zero)

Fire up Socket Spy/32, do "File/Begin Trace" (you may want to also turn on
Capture To Disk to save a .TXT copy of the trace) then launch Starcraft and
attempt a BATTLE.NET connection. After you are denied, exit out of Starcraft
and check out the trace results. If this is the first time you have attempted
to connect to BATTLE.NET using a particular bogus CD-Key, you should see what
I mean. Note that the registry keys are only polled the FIRST time you try
an invalid key, but not afterwards (I THINK). I have included a trace I did
myself as TRACE.TXT.

What does all of this mean? Well, if you plan to do "war-dialing" with
generated keys to find a valid one, you will definately want to make your
information anonymous. If you don't ever use BATTLE.NET for Starcraft,
then this doesn't affect you at all.


- Beowulf [RAZOR 1911]


This... simply cannot... do. If you wish to get the anonymizer find one yourself in google.com or talk to me on msn i can send u from there.
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Postby Telephalsion » Fri Aug 05, 2005 2:25 pm

so... it's just for starcraft?
Greatchickenman wrote:I'm up for any type of female at least once.


Any type of female.
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Postby Shindy » Fri Aug 05, 2005 3:24 pm

dunno... might be on diablo and warcraft 2.
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Postby Greatchickenman » Fri Aug 05, 2005 4:14 pm

Man. Blizzard sucks..
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Postby HolsteinCow » Sat Aug 06, 2005 12:07 pm

This isn't illegal.

When you burnt your illegally downloaded copy of Warcraft 3 onto a blank CD and then installed it, you forgot to read the EULA. By pressing the 'I agree' button, you agreed to have Blizzard extract this information from your computer.

Stupid libertarians. :roll:
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." (Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio)
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Postby Teenr0cker » Sat Aug 06, 2005 4:38 pm

yeah. If you read the OS user license agreement when you install windows, it states some stupid rules, like if you make some product while using their OS, and if you copyright it, if MS wants it, it's legally theirs. In the MS Web page designer agreement, you cannot make any page that slanders MS in any way....this is why I have decided to learn linux....becuase Doom 3 is open-source and everything is free of retarded shit....which means Apple sucks the most, followed closely by MS.
Sage Of The Wise wrote:This sounds like the beginning of a sitcom. Think about it: "Coming this fall to Fox, Ralphie and the Hooker".
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Postby Telephalsion » Sat Aug 06, 2005 4:43 pm

Technically they could put any crap into the eula, cause nobody will bother to read that fuckload of text.
Greatchickenman wrote:I'm up for any type of female at least once.


Any type of female.
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