World of Warcraft is suffering from a bad case of hackers and it is not something a Heal potion is going to sort out.

With more than 12 million WoW players the game developers and security researchers are having a devil of a job keeping out hackers. Apparently there is a thriving black market for hackers to buy and sell stolen online gaming accounts, items and in-game currency has become a billion-dollar criminal industry. Part of this is economic as the going rate for a WoW character account can sell for as much as four times the value of a stolen credit card.

Steven Davis, chief executive officer of game security firm SecurePlay said the crims make most of the cash from hacking users' accounts and trading the stolen characters, equipment and "gold". The going rate is $5 for 1000 in game gold and there is a lucrative market for those who will shell out cash to become more powerful in the WoW world without the effort. Davis said that getting a a character that represents 100 hours of play can translate to hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

WoW production director J. Allen Brack said the outfit had a dedicated team of people whose full-time job is detecting and preventing account compromises as it relates to stolen customer data.

More here.