Battleangel

Via Warp2Search. Like someone said on the forum, trust is good, reverse engineering is better. Here is a closer look at the “warden,” Blizzards equivalent to Punkbuster.

Rootkit - I recently performed a rather long reversing session on a piece of software written by Blizzard Entertainment, yes - the ones who made Warcraft, and World of Warcraft (which has 4.5 million+ players now, apparently). This software is known as the ‘warden client’ - its written like shellcode in that it’s position independant. It is downloaded on the fly from Blizzard’s servers, and it runs about every 15 seconds. It is one of the most interesting pieces of spyware to date, because it is designed only to verify compliance with a EULA/TOS. Here is what it does, about every 15 seconds, to about 4.5 million people (500,000 of which are logged on at any given time):

Some people, at least on W2S, took this news rather badly and started ranting on about what a loathsome hacker this guy is and how he is just moaning about this because Blizzard has made his hobby so much harder. Well, having read the article this doesn’t seem to be the case. Rootkit raises legitimate concerns regarding WOW and its choice to include spyware as it were, albeit client side only (?), without informing the public. Unlike Punkbuster which is common knowledge, even boasted about, and optional. I.e. if you don’t like it there are always punkbuster-free servers. One user on Rootkit even reports having his question about “Warden” denied on Blizzard’s forum.

There is also a thread about Warden on WoWSharp. Hmmm. I wonder if Blizzard, who are known for their manhandling of critics and “hackers,” could use the DMCA to silence these whistleblowers. Since it could be argued they are revealing proprietary information and, it also could be argued, opening up security issues. Kind of like in Hewlett Packard vs SNOsoft. Blizzard already knows its way around that piece of legislation obviously.