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Microsoft’s warning to MMORPG programmers - Ridiculous!
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
I was browsing the BBC website when I came across this article: Microsoft warning on online games. If you have some time to spare, it’s a funny piece of… “work”.
Here are some passages:
Criminals are targeting the lucrative world of online games, an engineer at software giant Microsoft has warned. Dave Weinstein said that massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft were vulnerable to attack.
I’m not surprised… most players use Microsoft Windows after all! 
Hackers could use malicious programs to steal players account information and then sell virtual items, such as gold or weapons, for real world cash. “The police are really good at understanding someone stole my credit card and ran up a lot of money. It’s a lot harder to get them to buy into ‘someone stole my magic sword,’” he told the Reuters news agency. [...] Earlier this year, nearly a quarter of a million characters were created in the Korean online game Lineage using stolen identities. Many of the characters were thought to have been put to work in “gaming farms”, where gangs of criminals work thousands of characters to acquire objects to be sold for real world cash. The Microsoft warning was made at the annual Gamesfest conference in Seattle. “Those of you who are working on massively multiplayer online games, organized crime is already looking at you,” Mr Weinstein told games developers at the conference. He urged the games developers to be aware of the security risks.
So, the issue is that hackers are getting players’ (and not “players” Mr. BBC!  ) accounts and selling the virtual player and/or his “possessions” in the black market. Here are my thoughts about this:
1) If there is indeed an evil black market that is stealing accounts and characters to make money, then there are some equally stupid people who actually BUY these stolen characters and items in order to play in a virtual world. In a sense, I say “Kudos” to the hackers who discovered and exploited this market to make some real-world profit ($$$) and I yell “DEE-DEE-DEEEEEE” (in the words of Carlos Mencia) to those mentally troubled people who actually purchase these items!  What needs to be explored and appreciated by society, not programmers, is why and how people get so involved in a video game that they might spend a fortune on virtual non-existent value.
2) The fact that a player must willingly install a trojan or some other kind of virus in order to enable the hacker to retrieve his or her account information is a barrier in itself. After all, aren’t we all told to not open any email from someone we do not know or any email that contains an executable? How is this any different? The difference may lie in the fact that very young people are also playing this game and may not yet be aware of these security issues. Information, like Education, is the key to pre-emptively eliminate problems.
3) The very nature of Black Markets makes it impossible to irradicate them especially if they are located online with several servers around the globe. The best way to fight against this “problem”, in my opinion, is to inform players and users of the risks they should not take and of the things they should not do - like accept files from a stranger and - much less - buy a character or his items for money.
All in all, I think that most game developers, especially Blizzard Entertainment, are well aware of this situation and have or will react shortly. What was not said in this article is that MMORPG games are extrememly successful and the millions of players that join them are not, in most cases, the types of people who would render themselves vulnerable to such attacks.
Sources: BBC, Blizzard
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I notice no one has anything to say… Is that a good sign? Lots of people have been visiting from WorldOfWar.net - a great WoW site. Thanks for letting them know TJ.
I have never been much into games… Things such as “someone stole my magic sword” are getting a little bit out of hand. My moto is: play for a 30 mins, kill everyone and get on with your life. More than that seems like a waste of time…
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