I am not a nerd, I am a level 9 warlord
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, Blog, Security, Internet on
With some industry commentators predicting that the Virtual World population will hit 50 million by 2011 there can be no more attempting to write off these 3D immersive environments as just another gaming fad. Indeed, in my book Being Virtual I have interviewed many people for whom the virtual world is at least as important as the real one, and for some more so. The argument so often posed by ‘the media’ which suggests that real life suffers when folk become addicted to their virtual ones can, in many cases, be countered by the simple fact that for some their real life stops and the roleplay begins when the computer is switched off rather than the other way around. The t-shirt slogan of ‘I am not a nerd, I am level 9 warlord’ is a badge of honour for some.
Whatever you think of virtual places and the people who inhabit them, however, the fact remains that virtual worlds have now developed very real economies. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about the suit wearing avatars that are making millions of Linden Dollars (which in turn can be traded for real US Dollars at various online currency exchanges) or the more informal avatars selling everything from shoes to sexual pleasure, and in some case both simultaneously. You might even go back and revisit the notion of virtual worlds as games, even here with the likes of Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing games, you will find in-game economies that revolve around player gold, weapons inventory and experience points. Little wonder that there are those who would do your avatar harm in order to get what it rightfully yours.
That is not what Dominic Hoskins, the manager of Panda Security UK is worried about though. Instead, he is more concerned about the booming black market in selling virtual assets to newbies who want an accelerated ride through the gaming experience. The hacker-controlled black market is taking advantage of special forums, chats and online auctions to sell stolen assets he claims. “Because functions, objects and passwords are accumulated exclusively through user experience they can be of significant user value” says Hoskins. In fact, according to Panda the infiltration of this sector of the gaming industry has flourished with hackers now creating malicious code aimed at specific players to target their passwords. He talks of Trojans of the Lineage family stealing Lineage passwords Wow family ones targeting World of Warcraft players.
All of a sudden the game is getting serious. Especially when you consider that behind those virtual interfaces there are databases of hundreds of thousands, millions, of users whose profiles can be used for nefarious purposes such as spamming and malware distribution…
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
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