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Man Arrested For RuneScape MMORPG Online Robbery
Unexpof writes "A man has been arrested by the British Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), accused of stealing the usernames and passwords from players of the RuneScape MMORPG. Security experts report that this is one of the first occasions when a Brit has been apprehended for 'virtual robbery,' although incidents have happened in the past. For instance, the CEO of the sci-fi trading game EVE Online stole 200 billion 'kredits,' which he then used as a deposit on a real-world house, and in October last year a Japanese woman was arrested by police after allegedly hacking her virtual husband 'to death.'"
Uhm, it was not the CEO for CCP (makers of Eve Online) who stole isk (not "kredits") to buy a house. It was a CEO of a player-run banking corporation. Ingame Eve corporations are like clans, so there's a BIG difference.
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
someone needs to get a clue. stealing and using or selling a users credentials is not a virtual theft. virtual theft is stealing the users stuff inside the game. stealing thier credentials to get into the game is the same as stealing their credentials for thier bank account or for their computer. Using said stolen credentials amounts to unlawful access at the very least.
The CEO of Eve Bank stole the online cash. The CEO of CCP (maker of eve) had nothing to do with this. Eve Bank is a player run financial institution inside the game. FACT CHECK!
There is no "CEO" of Eve Online. Eve Online is a game produced by CCP of Iceland.
There ARE Virtual CEO's of Virtual corporations within the Space-based MMO EVE Online.
I am also not aware of any corp CEO that has used EVE-O ISK to buy a real world house. Somehow I doubt any bank would accept a virtual money as collateral on a real house. Of course, If a private party was that foolish, then hey, more power to the corp CEO. Nevertheless that sounds like a fake story.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Security experts report that this is one of the first occasions when a Brit has been apprehended for "virtual robbery", although incidents have happened in the past. For instance, the CEO of the sci-fi trading game Eve Online stole 200 billion "kredits"
That's completely different. The "theft" of the Eve credits was entirely in-game - arresting someone for that would be like bringing a case for murder against someone for in-game killing. The case in this article is about the theft (or more likely I should think either "obtaining services by deception" or "obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception" - both crimes under the Theft Act but not actually theft themselves) of actual game accounts.
Try prosecution under the Misuse of Computers Act, specifically for unauthorised access to the accounts - which this fits perfectly. He stole and used usernames and passwords, nuff said.
It's not exactly the same as hacking someone's email account though, because if you do that you can potentially get hold of peoples bank/ebay etc accounts. I don't give a rat's arse about this or that game, and I'm a little annoyed about the idea of tax payer's money being wasted on non-crimes such as this.
Well, I assume Runescape is paid for on a monthly payment and you're actually 'renting' something that the makers of Runescape technically own (if they have a ToS similar to WoW). We discussed this in August about whether or not virtual property should be under the same law as regular property.
And really, you should be happy that your tax dollars are paying for this. The closest analogy I can think of is if you rented a moving truck and someone stole it from in front of your house and then anonymously returned it to the store at the end of your rental period. Now, you didn't get to move any of your stuff yet you were still charged for the truck. Basically you've entered into an agreement to use someone business's property in exchange for money and now a third party has not only obstructed that but prevented you from receiving use/enjoyment from your purchase. On a case by case basis, maybe not a big enough deal for $13 (or whatever Runescapes monthly payment is). On a mass scale (like this), call the authorities. The sad thing is that the emotional attachment and feelings of ownership that humans attach to accounts, items and characters are more than likely overlooked. And there's not a lot you can do about that, the law sticks to protecting things that are real and definite and measurable like your monthly payment.
Now, if Runescape was a free game and there was no credit card information at risk then I would agree that the authorities should let the players appeal to the Runescape company to increase protection of their accounts.
My work here is dung.
Runescape accounts are already very secure.
I'm sure I'll get mocked for this, but I did play the game for a long time as a member a few years ago.
Accounts have a password, but in game, to access your bank, you also need to enter a 4-digit pin number, and it's not type-able with your keyboard, so no keylogger can get it, and the places where numbers are change with each click. Also, you can't trade items with other players in very unbalanced trades (to stop gold farming).
I'm not sure what good it would do to rob or even steal another players account, seeing how Jagex (that's the company that runs Runescape) monitors accounts pretty closely, and you can't trade gold to another player, or even drop trade. (Drop trading is dropping items in the hope they will appear as loot to another player).
Runescape, as far as MMO's go, is as secure as it can possibly be.
Oh, and membership is only $6/month, not 13.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
"in October last year a Japanese woman was arrested by police after allegedly hacking her virtual husband "to death""
Ok, let's get this corrected. There was no arrest for virtual murder. Repeat: There was no arrest for virtual murder. The woman was arrested for hacking into someone else's account. What she did in game is irrelevant and has just been repeated and twisted over and over for the sake of a sensationalistic "news" story.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/woman-arrested/
1:1) A person is guilty of an offence if: a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in a computer; b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorized; and c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that this is the case.
Not sure why people would somehow consider this out of the ordinary other then it happens to be that the criminal behaviour towards this type of service in question hasn't had much attention from law enforcement.
[I]n October last year a Japanese woman was arrested by police after allegedly hacking her virtual husband "to death".
It sounds like she performed some kind of violent action, but in truth she just logged into his account (using info from when they were in a relationship) and destroyed his character. This got billed as "virtual murder" a lot back when the story broke to make it more salacious, but it's just the equivalent of logging into someone's webmail who made the mistake of telling you their password and deleting the entire history and address book.
Not much in the way of "hacking to death" in either sense, really.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").