A reminder – Prey is a program / project that allows you to track a computer or mobile phone in the event it gets stolen. It does this by installing a program onto the computer, adding the computer to your account and in the event your computer get stolen, you change it on the web page (using another computer of course) and the next time it is switched on and is on the net – all the information is relayed back to you such as IP, ISP and location. Of course it is not foolproof, should the said Thief wipe your machine / harddrive before putting it back on-line, then no way to track it. They have now introduced Pro Accounts which allows more computers and other good features.

Free Accounts

The Free Accounts are still there, this is 3 devices and 10 reports each and for most home users, this will be fine as this could include a desktop computer, a Laptop and an Android phone for example.

Pro Accounts

If you pay extra (a month) you get not only more devices you can track but also:

• Active Mode lets you know when your PCs last “checked in” by storing the timestamps of the heartbeats they send. This lets you know which of them are actually powered up and connected and which are not. Quite useful to detect when something weird is going on.
• Active Hardware Scan notifies you whenever a hardware change is detected in your PC, which is great for preventing RAM thefts (a common yet hard to detect kind of theft).
• You get the ability to increase the frequency for reports and actions up to super-fast two minutes.
• All your reports are secured with level 3 SSL encryption, so you can rest assured your information will always stay safe from sniffers.

You get a 10% discount if you choose to pay annually, and needless to say, you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel your Pro account any time, no hidden fees, no strings attached

How much is your device worth?

Looking at a company who might need to track a lot of devices, getting that laptop back quickly saves a lot of money, not just for the hardware but for the data stored on the device.

A new keylogger disguised as a World of Warcraft add-on is stealing account info and goods.

Last week reports of a “man-in-the-middle-attack” surfaced in regards to Blizzard’s MMORPG. World of Warcraft. Apparently hackers have created a tool that grants them access to accounts protected by an authentication tool. Once they are in control of the account, hackers can thus steal virtual gold and possessions until the account password is reset. Currently there’s no indication if the hackers gain access to data such as credit cards or other personal information.

The tool in question is a keylogger, possibly a file named emcor.dll which can be found in C:/Documents and Settings/Users/[username]/Application Data/Temp. Once the user launches the keylogger, the PC is infected and will in turn cause World of Warcraft to crash. Once the players re-start the game and log back into the account, the authenticator code is intercepted by the hacker. A different code is sent to Blizzard’s servers, locking the player out.

So how do players get the keylogger on their PC? It all starts with a sponsored link in Google showing up as a top result for WowMatrix, a free World of Warcraft add-on installer and updater. The problem is that the listing isn’t a genuine, leading gamers to the malware. “Several downloads are available and I decided to check out the installer / updater,” reads this forum post. “Results are pretty low at virustotal for the executable. The detection of the DLL hooked into our system is even worse, only 1 antivirus suspects some illegal activity.”

Because authenticator codes only last for 30 seconds, hackers have access to the WoW account until they log out. “This is still perpetrated by key loggers, and no method is always 100% secure,” Blizzard said in this forum post.

WoW gamers are warned to stay away from the following sites, which are actually based on legitimate WoW related sites with a typo at the end of each URL:

• wowmatrixf(dot)com
• Cursea(dot)com
• deadlybossmodss(dot)com
• gamesacca(dot)com