It works Just like your normal Authenticator with the added benifit of the awesome cool feeling you get from holding an iPhone. Finally sex appeal and WoW in the same place!

You can download The battle.net Mobile authenticator via the app store, or for a direct link Click here (note this will open up itunes, or what ever other app retrieving application you might use. I'm looking at you hackers.) Currently Availability is in the US only, but should be rolling out soon.

When you first open your app it goes to the setup screen which displays the coralting # you enter over at your battle.net account.

Seems very simple, now there is 0 reason to not have one. Currently they have English, French, German, Spanish, Russian (cyrillic) and Korean as supported languages. It's Compatiable with only 2.2.1 Software update.

Here are some helpful Q&A's from the site.



Do I need to have an active cell phone signal or access to a wireless network in order to use the Authenticator? Why is airtime required for use?

Airtime is only required in order to enable your Battle.net Mobile Authenticator for the first time, or in the rare case when you may need to resync or reset the Authenticator. Once you have enabled the Authenticator, you do not need to be in range of an active cell phone signal or have access to wireless service in order to retrieve a code to log in to World of Warcraft or other Battle.net services.


What happens if I lose my mobile phone after activating the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator?

Please contact Blizzard Customer Support if your phone is ever lost or stolen so that we can take appropriate action.

What happens if I delete the Mobile Authenticator application without deactivating it first?

If this occurs, you will no longer be able to log in to the Battle.net account protected by the Mobile Authenticator, or any World of Warcraft accounts that have been merged into it. You must contact Blizzard Customer Support so that we can take appropriate action in this event.


Can I use a Battle.net Mobile Authenticator and a Blizzard Authenticator at the same time?

You can only have one authenticator added to a Battle.net account at any given time.




Enjoy your new account security!

I am not a "codemonkey" per se. I am very much unfamiliar with coding of such applications. As much as this might be practical for people using iPhones, isn't this opening for reverse-engineering of the program/system of these authenticators, effectively reducing their security?

Granted, to have any practical use of that knowledge to invade any accounts, the hacker would probably have to know the previous number used by the true owner of the account when he/she logged in last time, but I still don't think it is a good idea to let this out of Blizzard's hands.

It would be nice if someone could affirm or dispel my nagging suspicion on this.

It's no less secure than a keyfob. The thing is, the application is (most likely) seeded to the phone with a # that you enter into your battle.net account and not the other way. As such I don't think you could reverse engineer it in such a way. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's more difficult than you would think.

Hmm so this is only for iphones for the moment? The link for regular US/EU carriers is not up yet. I wonder if this will end up working for Canada too...the damn authenticators have been sold out for AGES now.

Sadly no, it's not rolled out in Canada yet.

I have a feeling if these turn out popular (and I'm pretty sure they will be) you'll be seeing these for some other phones like the PRE and the Storm (and other Black berries) as well as the new Win-mo OS.

Edit-

A note my authorization code had my region in it it started as US-###########

It is theoretically weaker than a straight keyfob, because the iPhone connects to the PC and the Internet. You'd have to compromise the PC, grab the account info, then compromise the iPhone when it syncs with the PC. At that point, you might be able to get and transmit the unique password you need to access the account.

It would be a pretty impressive hack, and is extremely unlikely. But it's theoretically possible, as opposed to accessing the keyfob, which is flat-out impossible.