Phishers get creative with bogus offer for World of Warcraft's new expansion

Phishing scammers are targeting World of Warcraft players with a tempting but bogus pre-order offer tied to the Warlords of Draenor expansion, warns the security firm Malwarebytes.

The bait, says Malwarebytes, is in the subject header: "Gift-Boost a character to Level 90 when you pre-purchase Warlords of Draenor!" The email body, purportedly from Battle.net, tells the recipient they're one of 50,000 selected to receive the expansion for free, and provides a code. Then they're directed to a phishing site that Malwarebytes credits as being very believable in appearance.

It's all a big lure to funnel them through to a "redemption page" that asks users to give their Battle.net security question and answer.

The email originates from a Gmail account and the link goes to "an already known bad IP," says Malwarebytes.

"We've seen time and time again that there are phishers who are willing to put time, effort, and a bit of cash into making their scam appear as close to the real thing as possible," Malwarebytes said. "This is where research on the side of users should come in. Look it up, talk about it with your online friends, ask around. In this case, users may be better off asking Blizzard."