Double Secret Account Protection Gizmo

Alice had her WoW account hacked, her toons stripped of gear, and gold stolen from her guild's bank. In itself, this isn't all that unusual, but commenters mentioned the Blizzard Authenticator.

This little gizmo will fit on your keychain, and each click of the button on it will give you a 8-digit or so number that changes every few minutes. And every version of the gizmo gives a different set of numbers. So when you tell Blizzard to associate your gizmo's serial number with your account, it will ask for both your normal password, and the gizmo's number of the moment.

Simple password theft via keylogging or email hacking won't work any more.

I've seen a gizmo like that before, in the hands of a friend who, at the time, worked for the NSA. I'm sure it has some vulnerabilities to a concerted attack, but it's a lot better than simple password protection. The Blizzard store says it's only available in the US. Probably that's because it contains pretty strong encryption technology, and getting an export license for such things is tricky.

I wonder how long before SOE offers them...