The State of Security in MMORPGs

Anonymous writes "Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other online games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using online bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in online game security became fodder for the book, Exploiting Online Games. McGraw discussed with securityfocus the state of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these huge systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities."

Comments

Re:From a mainstream publisher

[kcbanner]

Its not that shady, security by obscurity was never good for anyone. Its not even secure at all.

development or hardening... ?

[deviceb]

Currently i'm playing a new game, it just hit open beta about a month ago. Shaiya online. It's a great game for a free to play MMO. Already some hacks have been spotted, but for the most part the hacks are out of view..
My gripe as with most MMOs is the rate of development. Players always will out pace the game development.. and i would rather have the developers focusing on the game, and not fixing flaws. -as weird as that sounds. Most studios do not have the man power to address issues quickly. -blizzard and the like is a while different story
This brings up the reason why companies use software such as Gameguard, or even Steam...
-and i think that unfortunately.. this is the future of online gaming, outside entitys trying to secure the game.

Back to the EQ GM comment. -Active GMs have been the only way to properly address issues in game. Once EQ was picked up by Sony the GM count dropped, and in game quality did also.
my 2 cents.