Video Game Security

1
Video Game Security

• Brett Cobbs
• Matthew Boquist

2
ONLINE VIDEO GAMES

• controlled a majority of the computer world for
  sometime now and have never stopped growing
• Gaming has always and remains a prime drive of
  the personal computer market
• In the past ten years it has grown as quickly as
  the internet and is in hundred of millions of
  peoples homes

3
MMORPG

• There are many types of genres for video games
  but the biggest and most security sensitive is
  the MMORPG (Massive Multi Online Role Playing
  Game).
• A massively multiplayer online role-playing game
  is a genre of computer role-playing games (CRPGs)
  in which a large number of players interact with
  one another in a virtual world

4
GREATEST OF MMORPGS

• The most popular of this type of video game is
  WoW (World of Warcraft)
• At the current time there are around 11 million
  subscribers to the game that pay a monthly fee of
  14 a month to play the game. That is a
  ridiculous 154 million dollars a month that
  Blizzard entertainment is making.
• This concentration of money and players is a
  spawning pool for hackers, cheaters, and
  criminals that will do anything to take advantage
  of the game and even make a living out of it.

5
GAME MONEY REAL MONEY?

• In WoW and many online mmorpgs there is an in
  game virtual economy that is in effect, in which
  players find items, sell items and, level up
  characters.
• Can sell their characters or items through third
  party programs(A Middle Market)
• IGE is the largest company in this middle market
  netting 400 million per year by acting as the
  real-world middle man for virtual goods.
• Entire industries of sweatshops with hundreds of
  thousands of workers in China now exist to do
  just this.

6
TYPE OF GAME EXPLOITS

• BOTTING
• DUPING
• AIM BOTTING
• sometimes called "auto-aiming", is software that
  assists the player in aiming at the target.
• WALL HACKING
• Wall hacking involves changing of wall properties
  in first-person shooters.
• MAP HACK
• is a cheat that enables the player to see more of
  the map than the game intends them to see.

7
WALL HACK

• WALL HACKING
• Wall hacking involves changing of wall properties
  in first-person shooters.

8
MAPHACK

• MAPHACK
• is a cheat that enables the player to see more of
  the map than the game intends them to see.

9
AIMBOT

• AIMBOTTING
• sometimes called "auto-aiming", is software that
  assists the player in aiming at the target.

10
BOTS

• A bot is a player who runs a third party program
  to control their character.
• The bot will kill monsters, loot money, mine, or
  gain levels automatically without the player
  having to be in front of the computer.

11
DUPING

• Duping refers to the practice of exploiting a bug
  in a video game to illegitimately create
  duplicates of unique items or currency
• Currency dupes cause inflation and cause the item
  to lose value
• This can create a great problem in the games
  economy and even with real money selling,
• Not sure if real or dupe

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vx50b-_feO6Afeature
related
12
Solving These Security Issues

• admins/moderators
• In game playere take care of many of the problems
  in the game
• power to ban accounts
• Patches
• fix and exploits or bugs in the game
• Third Party Programs
• create a secure environment for their game
• Example nProtect Game Guard

13
Pirating

• The act of downloading or stealing a game without
  paying for it.

• Anyone could be a pirate

• Major Security Issue
• Severe loss of funding
• Future Games
• Why make any more?

Mr. Burmester is not a pirate as far as we know
14
Why pirate games?

• A Known Pirates Response!

• Why not just buy your games to support the
  company? - Matt
• I go to college man, thats expensive, and video
  games are all fifty to sixty dollars. I still buy
  games when I know they will be good, but most of
  the new video games are not worth thirty
  dollars.
• Anonymous FSU Student

15
Cliff Harris, owner of Positech Games

• Harris asked why people pirated his games?
• Money
• Strong dislike of Digital Rights Management locks
  (SecuROM)
• Unknown quality

16
The Designers Strike Back!

• Class-action lawsuits
• More, and stricter SecuROM

17
Honest customer suffer, pirates laugh

• SecuROM had the opposite effect that companies
  wanted.
• Man in Pennsylvania files class action lawsuit
  against EA for installing files not mentioned in
  his installation manual or End User License
  Agreement.

• How far is too far?
• Should companies have the right to install
  unwanted, additional software on our machines?
• Are the machines resources not the customers?
• Why so hard to remove?

18
SecuROM causing more people to pirate?

• Spore, a recently released EA Games PC game, was
  not only pirated, the games SecuROM was removed
  from the pirated version, and being downloaded
  BEFORE the actual release date.

• Over 500,000 copies of the pirated version of
  Spore had been downloaded just days after
  release.
• Over 13,333,333 loss

19
The harsh SecuROMs are not causing an acceptable
solution.

• Honest customers suffer
• Unwanted software.
• Has been known to cause problems with machines.

• Developers suffer
• Harsh feedback from actual customers.
• Game still gets pirated, possibly more so than it
  would have without the harsh SecuROM.

• Pirates laugh!
• They just remove the harsh SecuROM and continue
  to pirate the games.
• Pirating becomes more acceptable to honest users
  to avoid the harsh SecuROM.

20
Acceptable Solution? Steam.

• http//store.steampowered.com/

• Online video game purchase/storage device.
• Cheaper, no middle man
• Easy access
• Games stored to account, not machine
• Light on SecuROM since game is guaranteed to be
  legit.

21
Questions?