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Hey, im posting this for my friend:
Patch 2.3 - WoW Warden updated to invade our privacy even more
I'm writing this in effort to get some kind of response from Blizzard, as Wardens behaviour after patch 2.3 has been changed considerably. If you already know what Warden is and about the previous conflict that happened between Blizzard and gamers who were afraid that Warden compromised their privacy then skip the points 1 and 2. A few somewhat similar posts (including a 10 page thread on US forum) on WoW forums have been deleted but they contained unnecessary flaming and rude comments. Lets keep those out of this thread and not give Blizzard an opportunity to delete this thread. If we keep this constructive and if the thread STILL gets deleted, then we know that this is something that Blizzard wants to hide from the public. Just in case, I have also put up this text on:
http://wardentwothree.blogspot.comI also encourage you to spread this information around by posting on guild forums and such. Please link to the URL above in case this thread gets deleted. You can contact me at
wardn23@gmail.com . You can also join the channel #warden on QuakeNet for further discussion on this topic.
1. What is Warden and what does/did it do (PRE patch 2.3)?
Warden is Blizzards anti-cheat program that comes with WoW. If you're running WoW then Warden is running in the background. Warden is downloaded "on the fly" from Blizzard servers and can be updated at ANY time possible without the user noticing it, not only at the same time with patches. Warden runs several times in a minute. It reads ALL your Windows title bars, and scans the first bytes of ALL your running processes. Warden then "hashes" this information and compares it against a list of "illegal hashes" (cheat/3rd party programs). If it finds a match you might get banned.
2. So why should I be worried (PRE patch 2.3)?
Window titles and first bytes of your processes could easily include some private information, like social security & credit card numbers. Blizzard has previously stated that players should be OK with this information being gathered as it is not used for anything else except detecting cheaters. Already before patch 2.3 Electric Frontier Foundation labeled Warden as spyware and called it a "massive invasion of privacy":
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/10/new-gaming-feature-spyware Here are links for BBC and news.com articles, both published in 2005:
http://www.news.com/Game-players-say-Blizzard-invades-privacy/2100-1043_3-5830718.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4385050.stm
3. What changed in 2.3 and why if I wasn't worried before should I be worried now?
Before 2.3 there were ways to expose what Warden was doing. There was a program called "The Governor" which allowed one to see what data Warden was dealing with. As of patch 2.3 Warden has been changed so that it includes a cryptographic function which _effectively disables_ our ability to see what kind of information is being sent to Blizzard servers. Now we have no way of knowing if its just our processes and window titles that are being scanned, and that it is only this information that is being sent further.
As far as I know, by encrypting the data that is being sent by Warden Blizzard did at least momentarily achieve to disable a software called "ISXWarden" that was being used by some botters. This was a small victory for them though, since the amount of ISXWarden users compared to some other popular bots is low. The other popular botting programs remain unaffected by this change. But I am a lot more interested about my OWN PRIVACY than momentarily stopping an insignificant amount of botters. This Blizzards war can be (unfortunately) compared to DVD or Blu-Ray encryptions - Blizzard may slow them down but they will always find a way to go around it. Only this time the normal users privacy gets invaded because of this.
For those who are interested in the technical details, here is a link to ISXWardens developers comments about the recent Warden change. Keep in mind that what he has posted in regards to the technical aspects of Warden and what it could do to invade our privacy are true but I believe his motives are far different than mine, he is basically pissed off because the recent change took away his business:
http://onwarden.blogspot.com/2007/11/storm-is-brewing.html
Warden, as a program that is running on our computers could be made capable of (for example) scanning our hard-drives. Is our trust in Blizzard and all of their employees this great? We allow them to scan for all this information with a program that could be updated any second without us noticing it, now without even knowing what information they might scan for, just for the sake of cheat detection? What if a real hacker gets his hands on the "Warden server" and maybe decides to change the Warden code a bit?
Why are other ways of detecting hackers/botters/cheaters not implemented? Blizzard should concentrate on detecting the possible botters with means that do not invade our privacy! There are ways to do that, why are the GameMasters not doing their job and checking for possible botters ingame, why are the bots who have been reported several times by different people still running around? Why are the characters who are online 24/7 farming gold not being checked on? Does this game not bring enough money to Vivendi/Blizzard for them to hire a few more GMs? Implementing other
4. But by accepting the EULA and TOS you agreed to all of this, stop whining crybaby!?
The EULA and TOS are largely not enforceable by laws in many (if not all) European countries. Violating the EULA doesnt mean that you're violating the law. Blizzard knows that hardly anyone reads the EULA and can hide pretty much anything in that large junk of text that is hard for a normal human being to interpret without legal advice. If Blizzard is allowed to do this without any criticism at all, more software/game firms will learn that they can do it too and we will start seeing more and more "Wardens" invading our privacy.