Activision reportedly cracking down on selling of hacked Warzone accounts
Activision has reportedly implemented new security measures to prevent hackers from selling hacked Warzone accounts to users looking to use unlocks in the battle royale title.
A new report from VICE’s gaming division, Waypoint, states that Activision has implemented new security measures to prevent sellers from selling hacked Call of Duty: Warzone accounts.
Hacked Warzone accounts offer users a way to directly start playing with certain benefits or more importantly, having all content unlocked.
Examples of hacked accounts in Warzone include users who use tools to unlock all of the camos, skins, Operators, and more for free. According to VICE’s report, some accounts can be sold for up to $2,000, especially if the highest camos are unlocked in the account, like Damascus.
We’ve even seen many streamers can get hit with a hack that unlocked all weapons and camos for them during a hack that would occur in lobbies. That issue has since stopped, but some players who want an already leveled up account have been searching in Discord servers to buy these accounts.
Now, however, many of the sellers are complaining in the Discord that they are unable to get hacked accounts setup because of recent security changes in Warzone. Instead, these hackers are offering to unlock items within players’ own accounts, which is not safe option, since that includes hanging over account access.
“Since accounts are in short supply due to security measures changing, we’ll now be offering a variety of unlock services. In short we can help you unlock pretty much anything in [Modern Warfare / Cold War],” read a message in the Discord, reviewed by VICE.
Another Discord admin wrote a message saying, “I wish I got any good news, so far none 🙂 [Call of Duty] market is pretty much fucked in terms of lobbies and accounts.”
Multiple Discord servers and underground market sites have listed hacked accounts has “out of stock”.
When asked by users when they will have more stock of hacked accounts, an admin said: “never.” They are gone, apparently.
VICE reports that this is because of a security change Activision has implemented which allows their team to better track accounts, spoofs, and how users are able to acquire the accounts.
VICE says that it’s a new “captcha system” that dramatically slows the tools down that would allow hackers to get into accounts. And, Activision can now track and identify these accounts that are attempting to be hacked and ban them immediately.
This is leading sellers to no longer having accounts to sell to customers, putting a dramatic pause on this underground market.
Activision has come under fire by Warzone players since the game’s March 2020 launch for a variety of hackers, from aim bot, wall hacks, to account hacks. The company seems to be taking steps in the right direction now with key updates made in a variety of places and more to come.
Recently, Raven Software added in a feature that let players know if someone in their game was hacking. The kill feed message now says “[Username] has been banned.” Previously, it just grouped these users into a “disconnected” message.
