Now before we begin on this news bit, we understand that the exploit has been around for more than a day. With an unscheduled maintenance already taken place over the last few hours and with many facing horrible lag to the server at this moment, the reason for all this is due to Blizzard trying to fix a seemingly simple exploit that allows hackers to buy items on the Auction House for almost next to nothing.

The concept to the exploit is quite simply grandma-nodding-simple; buying an item at its bidding price instead of the buyout price.

Say for example I’m going sell a Prestige Slayer Rare Amulet on the auction house. I set the initial starting bid at 1 million gold simply because I’m feeling ignorantly generous, but being the hopeful douche that I am, I set the buyout price at 10 million gold. The hacker sees my amulet and decides to use  the exploit. After a few shadowy tinkering behind his monitor and nasty keyboard, he buys my amulet for a mind numbingly — 1 million gold. I start slamming anything I see because I know the amulet is obviously worth more a million peanuts.

All the hacker needs to do now is rinse and repeat, then laugh his/her way off on the Real Money Auction House earning the green bucks.

While Blizzard has already ran an unscheduled maintenance, people are still reporting on the official Diablo 3 forums (though they are being taken down rapidly) that the exploit still works. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any official statement as of yet from Blizzard themselves.

We’ll report back as soon as we hear anything.

http://www.thebitbag.com/2012/07/13/diablo...s-hijack-items/