Hacking MMORPGs for Fun and Mostly Profit

Architecture and Background

Josh Phillips - Hacking MMORPGs for Fun and Mostly Profit Extra Materials Here: Online games, such as MMORPG's, are the most complex multi-user applications ever created. The security problems that plague these games are universal to all distributed software systems.

Vulnerability Analysis

Online virtual worlds are eventually going to replace the web as the dominant social space on the 'Net, as Facebook apps have shown, and this is big business. MMORPG game security is something that is very important to game studios and players, yet bots and exploits continue to infest all major MMORPG's, the creators and maintainers of the next generation of MMORPG's will need to understand software security from the ground up or face failure.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

The problem extends from software bugs such as item or money duplication, to mechanical exploitation such as botting, which leads to economic forces and digital identity theft. There is upwards of a billion dollars at stake, for both game hackers and game operators.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Both Josh and Kuba have explored game hacking from both sides, and this talk presents a pragmatic view of both threats and defenses. Josh Phillips is currently a Senior Malware Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, previously he was a Virus Analyst for Microsoft Corp. He cut his teeth reversing by hacking and botting for profit, several MMORPG games. He has had professional ties to several of the big name virtual currency dealers in addition to being well known in the underground game hacking community.