Exploiting Online Games

Gary McGraw

Website Maintenance Alert

Due to scheduled maintenance, the USENIX website may not be available on Monday, March 17, from 10:00 am–6:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7). We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

If you would like to register for NSDI '25, SREcon25 Americas, or PEPR '25, please complete your registration before or after this time period.

Abstract:

This talk (based on a book of the same title co-authored by Greg Hoglund) frankly describes controversial security issues surrounding MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. This no-holds-barred approach is fully loaded with code examples, debuggers, bots, and hacks, of interest whether you are a gamer, a game developer, a software security person, or an interested bystander. I will cover:

Why online games are a harbinger of software security issues to come

How millions of gamers have created billion-dollar virtual economies

How game companies invade your privacy

Why some gamers cheat

Techniques for breaking online game security

How to build a bot to play a game for you

Methods for total conversion and advanced mods

Ultimately, this talk is mostly about security problems associated with advanced massively distributed software. With hundreds of thousands of interacting users, today's online games are a bellwether of modern software yet to come. The kinds of attack and defense techniques I describe are tomorrow's security techniques on display today.

Gary McGraw, Cigital

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.

BibTeX

@conference {268614,
author = {Gary McGraw},
title = {Exploiting Online Games},
year = {2007},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}

Download