The Warden (software)

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The Warden (also known as Warden Client) is an anti-cheating tool integrated in World of Warcraft, and Diablo II by Blizzard Entertainment. The Warden searches for familiar signatures of cheating tools as well as looks at the contents of any open windows while World of Warcraft is running.^[1] Some users consider the system to be spyware, but despite the slight invasion of privacy, most players seem to accept it in its role of keeping World of Warcraft free of exploits.^[2]

The name Warden has not been publicly acknowledged by Blizzard to be the correct name of the tool. It was inferred by hackers who noticed the string WardenClient.cpp in the WoW.exe file. It is believed that The Warden is named after Maiev Shadowsong, because the string "Maiev.mod" is also present in Warden-related code (it is encrypted in WoW.exe, but not Warcraft III's Game.dll).

Simple reverse-engineering of Warcraft III, StarCraft, and Diablo II indicates that these games may also use The Warden.

The Governor is a program that reports to the user what data The Warden is sending to Blizzard. As of 2005-11-24 there have been no reports of anyone being banned for using The Governor. Also, in November 2005, it was proven that the XCP rootkit secretly included with Sony music CDs in North America for the purposes of copy prevention could be used to disguise cheat programs from The Warden.^[3]

Blizzard has said that The Warden does not gather any personally identifiable information about players, only data about the account being used. It also states that the data collected is only used for finding evidence of illegal programs.