Cyber theft hits gamers
CYBER criminals are fleecing gamers of up to $50 billion a year stealing and reselling digital swords, armour and other fictional resources used in online games.
Deakin University School of Information Technology researcher Nick Patterson said online gaming accounts were being hacked with the in-game items stolen and transferred to other accounts and online auction sites to be sold for realworld profits.
“Because of the effort involved in obtaining these digital goods, which range from rare crafting materials to weapons, vehicles or clothing used by your in-game avatar, they have a real-world monetary value — so cyber criminals are looking to steal them and resell them,” Dr Patterson said.
“$50 billion worth of digital goods are being stolen annually — that’s the monetary value of these items once they’re stolen and put on auc- tion sites.” He says anecdotal evidence suggests the virtual property market is worth between $12 billion and $65 billion.
Dr Patterson estimated more than a billion people globally were registered to play in virtual worlds in 2014, with that number likely to have increased due to improved internet speeds and infrastructure.
Dr Patterson has come up with a “two-pronged approach” for games companies to integrate into their products and systems.
“The research I’ve come up with is a program that’s 80 per cent effective at recognising if someone has broken into your account or is stealing your digital goods, which means the provider of the virtual world environment could then lock off or suspend the account.
“If cyber criminals manage to get by that somehow, if it’s an elite-level hacker, there’s also an in-built detection method to recognise if theft is occurring, so users can then suspend activity.”
Dr Patterson said game developers and publishers had tried to fight the issue using two-step authentication processes and codes sent to user mobile phones but it did not always prevent theft.
“Any time there’s so much money around something the hackers are always 10 steps ahead of everyone else, and they’re always going to find ways around it.”