The Authenticator and the human element

I have been reading through rather extensive posting on the net in various locations where it is stated one WoW player had an authenticator removed from their account without permission of the account owner, but by a hacker impersonating that account owner.

The links concerned are as follows ... a Blue please edit out if this is felt to be inappropriate

<Only removing to alleviate any specific commentary regarding a third-party source.>

All three links talk about the same incident ... and a google search fails to find any other reported incident of security breach where an authenticator was involved. Plenty of gratuitous remarks about Blizzard in reference to this one reported claim, but nothing else.

Ok, why do I post this ...

I want to provide the opportunity for a kindly Blue here to ( if they are permitted to do so, and I understand they may in fact be specifically forbidden to comment directly on this case ) to ..

1) verify or deny the occurence of this incident where an authenticator was removed from an account without the account holders permission ( ie. a hacker managed to convince Blizzard they were the account owner )

2) if this is verified ... that new procedures are put in place to prevent such an occurence in the future ( or maybe simply ensuring that existing procedures cannot, by human error, be bypassed again )

And a pre-emptive thank you to other posters for not turning this thread into a flamefest.