Virtual worlds are increasingly being used by cybercriminals to
launder money and steal data, says a
white paper from web security firm McAfee.
The paper, by Igor Muttik, a senior architect at McAfee's Avert
Labs, says the in-game economies of
virtual worlds are being hijacked by criminals.
In the "Securing Virtual Worlds Against Real Attacks - The
Challenges of Online Game Development" paper, Muttik says criminals
are attempting to hide their profits through the exchange of
virtual currencies.
"Typically, when a gaming account is compromised, attackers will
convert the objects they steal into virtual currency, and then
convert the virtual currency into real money," says Muttik.
The paper also says scammers are increasingly using virtual
worlds to steal private data for fraud.
Poor scripting in some online games allows some viruses to
auto-execute and propagate.
There are also phishing attempts and spam messages luring
members to malicious sites for "free" games.