When gaming first began as a concept, there wasn’t any of the sort of connectivity we see today in terms of being able to play with others online; it was just a controller, a console, and a TV. Simple. Now, of course, the landscape has drastically changed. How has that affected cybersecurity?
On today’s episode of What That Means, Camille is joined by Matt Areno to dive into exactly that. Matt has a PhD in Computer Engineering, as well as over 10 years of experience as a hacker. He now leads the Security Assurance and Cryptography Team at Intel, and he’s an absolute wealth of information when it comes to the topic of gaming. Whether you’re a casual Animal Crossing fan or you’re flying through ultra-tough games on permadeath mode, this is a very interesting conversation that you don’t want to skip out on!
They cover:
The broad definition of gaming
How the landscape of gaming has changed over the years, moving from quite simplistic and non-connective formats to now very much interactive online experiences
The ways that government agencies and the military are now using gaming as a means for recruiting
How gaming companies make money now as opposed to in the beginning
What (if anything) you can do if your gaming account is hacked
The reality of bullying when it comes to “MMOs” (massively multiplayer online games)
... and more. Great conversation, don’t miss it!
The views and opinions expressed are those of the guests and author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Intel Corporation.
Here are some key take-aways:
Gaming has massively evolved since its inception, including the ways in which the military and government agencies are capitalizing on the format as a recruiting strategy.
While the games of yore primarily made money off the sale of cartridges, in-game stores are now a staple source of income for developers.
With in-game stores there are cybersecurity concerns; because players can essentially pay to be the best or most advantageous, now accounts hold real-life financial value that hackers could try to exploit for virtual inventory.
People actually make black market careers for themselves playing video games to level up accounts and then sell them off, and there are also hackers who will steal others’ accounts to sell off without actually putting in any of the work.
While many gaming companies now flag suspicious activity and offer two-step authentication, if you are actually hacked (and it’s not a mass leak), it can be very difficult to prove your identity and resolve the situation.
Bullying (especially when it comes to free games) is super difficult to prevent; even if someone is reported, they’re likely to just create a new account and start all over.
And bullying is also influenced by someone’s funds within a game; because gaming companies want to make money through the in-game stores, they’re often reluctant to reprimand well-funded bullies for fear of losing income.
Some interesting quotes from today’s episode:
“I guess if I had to define gaming, I would say that gaming is interactive storytelling. You know, it can take on so many different forms—whether it’s a board game, whether it’s a dice game, whether it’s something like D&D (which I also play with several friends), whether it’s on a computer, whether it’s on your TV, your phone, your tablet. All of these games are based around a storyline that takes you from Point A to Point B and attempts
to engage you in various different aspects of that story.”
“A lot of the electronics world that we have today we literally owe to the field of gaming.”
“Because there’s been so much advancement in our technology, even the skills of playing video games has become useful. And you can see that literally in flying drones.”
“A lot of what we’re seeing in the military as things become more and more automated, it becomes more like a video game. And so they are very, very vested in utilizing this as a tool for recruitment, utilizing this as a tool for training and engaging with it.”
“So now as an attacker, a hacker, I’m thinking, “Well, geez, why don’t I just go up for Steam? If I can compromise Steam, then I could access all of these different accounts worth all this money that I can then turn around and sell in real life.” And so it really became this entire evolution of gaming and how gaming is structured that brought in these attacks from hackers.”
“There really is legitimately an underground black market for log-in credentials for this. Now there are some people who, and I kid you not, this is an actual profession for them.”
“It really depends on your ability to prove that you were actually hacked. Can you actually prove that the person who logged in to the game was not you; that it was somebody else.”
“When it’s a mass leak--when they know that the people have gotten on and compromised--they’ll work with players to try and get that fixed. But otherwise there’s really no legal obligation for them to help you at all unless you can prove that that the account was hacked and compromised.”
“Even if people report them, even if people say, ‘Hey, this person is being a bully,’ they look through the chat log, they detect that this is what’s happening and they deactivate the account, the person just creates a new one, because why not? It’s free or they move on to another game. So there’s really no stopping that aspect, especially with free games.”
“If the bully is well-funded, there’s just not much you can do about it.”