I was warned that doing this story too late would be detrimental because the evidence for it would be erased by Blizzard. Given that we have a pretty big queue of stories and Diablo III is in the news regularly, I put it off only to find that by the time I got around to the Diablo III forum board, lo and behold Blizzard had already deleted the thread, you can check out the remains of it right here. Sadly Blizzard deleted the thread faster than Google could cache the page.
The deleted thread alerted Blizzard to a Real-Money Auction House exploit that enables hackers to buyout items for a low price using a hex editor trick and a system clock glitch. Ultimately, it allows users to buy items for a really low price, making it possible to pay for high-end items with very little real money, but only when the item doesn't have a buyout price set.
This kind of tactic was explained in detail over at the Owned Core forums, it was later reiterated for newbies who couldn't get it to work on the Blizzhackers.cc board, where users lamented that the exploit had already been hotfixed. However, upon further reading you'll find a detailed explanation of the exploit and how to execute it without being caught on the Blizzhackers.cc forum. You can check out the tutorial below re-posted by guy named BaneW.
Hex Editor (recommended to use Hex Fiend if you are using Mac)Steps on using Diablo 3 Exploit RMAH Bid CheatNote that the steps in here are only an educated guess on how Diablo 3 hackers perform the Diablo 3 RMAH bid cheat. We will not spoon feed you on how to use some of the tool involved in this. We will just quickly brief you on how the process is done.Look for an item using the RMAH.Dump the memory. (memory editor can also be used)Scan for the item memory address (E.g. 0x1b450c60)Find the “real” reference for the item.Find the hex values for the bid confirmation and buyout confirmation.Switch the bid confirmation with the buyout confirmation.Find the hex values for the bid button and buyout button.Switch the bid button with the buyout button.Click the bid button.Tada!
Blizzard recently mentioned to a user that they were actually looking into fixing an exploit for the Real-Money Auction which was the cause for the user having his $250.00 delayed in payment given a similar glitch.
Rumor has it that this glitch will be hotfixed soon enough if it hasn't already been hotfixed. There's really only one way to find out, right?!
Blizzard has been keeping a close-lid on all things Real-Money Auction House related, mainly because it's the bread and butter for Diablo III. It's quite sad that the main draw to the game is the implementation of loot gambling for real money.
Also, just as an update, there are still people who haven't had their money refunded or their accounts fixed, including the banned Linux users, this guy who lost $149.00, this other guy who lost $200 and this other guy who lost $50 to the grey area of the RMAH.
