Hello, friends.
After running into a little bump on the road, I've thought up of a way to "lock" your account. That is, this method makes it so that nobody can go onto your account, provided they don't have access your username, birthday, and email account. If someone knows all of that information about you, then you're pretty much screwed hard.
In any case, I'm making this thread simply because of all the people dumping loads of NX into locking their items and such due recent events. Weeks ago I passed it off as just another hack scare because most of the time hack "attacks" are just fads in which those who lost their accounts due to their own gap in judgment place their blame on someone else.
However, I will admit that there does seem to be quite a bit more people this time around claiming the same thing, as well as this "Vent" dude spilling a list of stolen account info. I will admit that there's a pretty alarming possibility of some exploit existing.
Because of this, I tried thinking of a way one could "lock" their account. Before, what one would do to lock their account would be to request a password reset and keep their temporary password until they need to log back in. This would make a randomly generated passphrase every time the user was done with their account. However, many believe that the recent account stealing have to do with a database exploit. If this is the case, while a temporary password may give you a little more protection, it becomes worthless if you crap out on luck and get a password that the group behind this can crack.
So what do you do?
Create a password that cannot be used, even if it was cracked. Initially, my theory was to use a password with special text characters in it. This would make it EXTREMELY difficult to crack, if this group has the MD5 hashes. However, you cannot copy+paste into the Maplestory client, so that part of my plan was ruined. But then I realized that this password didn't work even on Nexon's site.
That's right, using a password with special characters makes it impossible for your account to be logged into. If you try to log into said account in question, you'll simply be redirected to the portal page of Nexon.net, without being logged in or receiving any error messages.
So then, even if the group did manage to crack this password (believe me, including special characters really increases the difficulty level on this) they wouldn't even be able to use it. It'd be completely useless to them.
This is your key. Use it to lock your account whenever you need, and only open your account with a password reset request. When you sign off from Maple, change your password back to your unusable one.
Let me give you some examples.
When I say special characters, I don't mean !@#$%(etc.), what I mean are characters such as ♥ and ∞.
So if you make a password like "FlyMe2DaM☪on", or "☆LetMeSing★", or "兄貴物語かっこいい", they'd all be impossible to use in Maple or on Nexon.net.
As a warning: Do not do this if you no longer have access to the email account you signed up with, or don't remember your birthday. If you don't have access to your email, you won't be able to get the password reset, and will be stuck with an unusable password. If you do not know your birthday, you will be unable to even request a password reset, and will be stuck with an unusable password.
I just felt like providing some extra reassurance to those who are still paranoid. Don't drop $50 protecting all of your in game valuables. This takes maybe 30 seconds at most after each logout, and about 30 seconds before each login. It's simple to do, and acts as a safe to your account. Unless they have access to your email account and birthday, they shouldn't be able to log into your account at all.
Sincerely,
Your dear friend.Your local image provider.
Edit - Apparently, you get 1 password reset a day. In other words, only change your password to the unusable version if you're sure that you aren't going to sign on again for the day. You won't be able to reset it again if you've already done so beforehand.
As of right now, you can't unlock it more than once a day. Once it's locked, you get one key every 24(?) hours. Makes the method less flexible than I thought, but it's still pretty secure. I'm still testing this a little.
By the way, you can get special text characters from charmap.
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