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Briefly noted

June 25th, 2007 (Visited 1888 times) Tags:

Virtual Worlds News: More Cyber Thieves Prefer Virtual Money to Real

“McAfee now sees more malware programmed to steal passwords for World of Warcraft now than trojans aiming for banking information, said Craig Schumager of the McAfee research labs.”

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Wolfe said on June 26th, 2007 at 4:39 am:
The secondary market is like any market based on the trading of contraband. Of the 10% fraud you will find that its the inexperienced sellers who suffer through 95% of the cases. This translates into basically everyone who does their first 1-10 sales getting totally ripped off by professional virtual con artists who appear to be employed by maffia style organisations.

If the volume of fraud these days is down to less than 10% its most likely because a bigger share than 90% of the market is supplied by professionals who learned to survive or to cooperate with the virtual maffia.
Sam said on June 26th, 2007 at 4:47 am:
Well, virtual currency is the single best thing to steal - so that makes sense.

From a realistic point of view…

- It does not get tracked (game logs don’t really help - unlike bank transactions)
- It’s anonymous (it’s a commodity - unlike cars)
- It can be moved in unlimited quantities (no physical restrictions - unlike laptops)
- Few laws and regulations regarding the stealing itself (even if someone gets caught, virtual theft is a tough one)
Steven Davis said on June 26th, 2007 at 8:50 am:
@Sam -
Most of the problems you have cited are flaws with the current implementations of virtual currencies and assets, not with the concepts themselves.
- Tracking should be trivial.
- Except for account theft, it is hardly anonymous and there is still IP address logging to begin a forensic analysis
- The assets can’t actually leave the virtual world, so they can be tracked, recovered, and even regenerated for the victim.
- Theft is theft. It is a crime. Virtual World / Online Game operators need to recognize that they are creating value and valuable assets and take these incidents seriously, not just as a customer support problem.
Fabled said on June 26th, 2007 at 11:30 am:
As with anything frontier people will try to exploit it as fast and as best as they can before the government move in and catch up and it becomes harder to commit a crime. The article nailed the it right on the spot on why cyber crimes are on the rise, it’s easy to perpetrate, harder for authorities to catch them, harder to track down due to the anonymity of the internet and since everything are all just data the “hot goods” are easily liquidated or converted to cash. Plus even if the criminal did get caught all they get are a few slaps on the wrist compared to real life crime where the punishment is more severe and the risk of physical death and/or injury is high.
Benson said on June 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm:
Not to be an arse, but I have never been a fan of PLAYING WoW. I appreciate deeply all that World of Warcraft has done for the MMO industry, but honestly, I would just quit playing WoW if I was very concerned about being singled out as a target out of 8 million subscribers. With how specifically designed the newer WoW content is, I would probably start suggesting for people to look forward to the new MMO’s. In the next 6 months a new game will be released that will provide more than WoW ever could. People will just have to take the leap of faith and leave their sanctuary of intentially designed addictive content and venture into the new and hopefully more dynamic Communities.
IQpierce said on June 27th, 2007 at 12:46 pm:
Benson wins the “off-topic” award.

Although I saw something interesting on that topic: WoW has not done as much for the MMO industry as one would expect. A recent article in the Escapist points out that the “trickle-down” effect that everyone expected to see (of WoW subs leaving and becoming subs in other MMOs), is not really happening… at least, not nearly as much as predicted.

“There is little evidence to suggest the average WoW fan knows what MMOG stands for, let alone what the heck a Tabula Rasa is.”
Michael said on June 29th, 2007 at 8:57 am:
@Steven -
Perhaps…

- Tracking should be trivial.

This could be debatable. Tracking big name items would not be too hard and not too much of a burden on the underlying database. Tracking every single copper piece in circulation while not impossible would probably crater the performance of any asset system.

- Except for account theft, it is hardly anonymous and there is still IP address logging to begin a forensic analysis.

IP addresses will help us a lot. One sec while I log in through my neighbor’s/public/internet cafe/university’s unsecured wireless network. We need to consider that the criminal can be sitting in another country and/or deploying means to hide his IP address and hardware profile. Virtual theft is probably about as close to an anonymous crime as you can get.

- The assets can’t actually leave the virtual world, so they can be tracked, recovered, and even regenerated for the victim.

Unless the “victim” is party to the theft which I wager has been the reason why many games have balked at being too liberal with restoring items. How do you know I did not willingly sell the item to the other person and now want it back?

- Theft is theft. It is a crime. Virtual World / Online Game operators need to recognize that they are creating value and valuable assets and take these incidents seriously, not just as a customer support problem.

Sorry, but we are not there yet. When I own a car in the United States, I have a car that is registered in my name. When I sell the car to you, we both have to go sign the title in the presence of a notary to start the transfer of the title of ownership from me to you which requires IDs, signatures, state-approved witnesses (the notary), trips to courthouse, etc. When I bought those Gloves of Frenzy off the auction house, what evidence do we have that you - the real you - honestly meant to sell that item to me and not someone hijacking your account? The only way to get around that is to get rid of the anonymity and/or account sharing in games, virtual worlds and the interenet in general.

It’s sort of interesting the hoops you have to jump through to sell a $500 car compared to selling $500 worth of gold in WoW.
Morgan Ramsay said on June 29th, 2007 at 12:15 pm:
How do you know I did not willingly sell the item to the other person and now want it back?

In the Star Trek universe, there are replicators. If players have free access to any item as long as they have the knowledge to program an item into the replicator, then would that remove the problem (at least for Federation citizens) of theft? I guess we’ll see what happens when Perpetual finally releases Star Trek Online.