Beware virtual 'crimes of the future', says Trend Micro chief

Internet-enabled gaming is becoming a major force in home entertainment, which makes it a target for criminal activity. In turn, this obliges experts within the IT industry to offer help and advice. 'Based on all the precedents, the so-called 'creative' minds of the malware industry will be quick to capitalize on public enjoyment of these fantastic and powerful products,' said Justin Doo, Managing Director of Trend Micro Middle East and Africa.

Just as the challenges facing the IT industry have mutated in recent years, from computer viruses to web-borne stealth attacks, in future it will probably extend to games consoles. This prediction reflects the pace of development within the illegal malware industry - which now stages its own graduate recruitment events in some parts of the world - rather than any intrinsic flaws in the consoles themselves.

Part of the appeal of the new generation of gaming platforms is their capacity to let players interact online. Based on the speed with which other forms of online activity have been attacked, Doo estimates it is only a matter of time before hackers are able to exploit vulnerabilities in games systems via the internet, in order to access the information and stored on them and misuse their processing power.

'Criminals could take control of the storage and processing power of a games console and use it for illicit purposes, such as launching spam and distributing denial of service (DNS) attacks,' said Doo. ¡§Stranger still, we are already seeing crimes where virtual properties - which solely exist as data - are being stolen and sold on for hard cash.'

As an example of this trend unfolding, Dutch police arrested a teenager on suspicion of theft. The youth is accused of stealing virtual furniture worth 4000 Euros (Dhs21500) from Haboo Hotel, a 3D social networking site. Online 'virtual worlds' also trade in various virtual currencies, allowing gamers to purchase items that would otherwise take hours of gameplay to acquire. In turn, this virtual money can be traded for its real life equivalent, on sites such as ebay.

Since new generation gaming allows players to create such artefacts themselves - for instance, the fastest selling 'first-person shooter' in history includes a feature enabling gamers to make animated movies - games consoles will be housing plenty of virtual items that could be hacked, stolen and resold in the future.

Home game systems with Web site browsing capabilities will continue to proliferate, and Web browsing via a game console is expected to become more and more popular. With the growing trend, users may also become more susceptible to malicious Web sites through the game system, or may have a chance to become the victim of cybercrime that targets monetary transactions such as shopping, banking, and securities trading through Web sites.

Trend Micro is developing its response to these new problems, such as Web Security for PS3, the first globally supported Web security service for a home game system, which uses Trend Micro¡¦s own Web reputation and URL filtering technology. By using this service, a wide range of PS3ƒn users can feel safe to browse the Internet.