Protecting Gamers From Phishing and Trojan Threats in MMORPGs

This clash has nothing to do with the simulated battles on Gindis, Eternal Duel, Mobstar or any of the more hip gaming sites. No, this one's for real. The villains in this combat are criminal hackers and phishing scammers, and their targets: unsuspecting on-line gamers. And while the battlefield may be cyber space, there's nothing virtual about the damage wrought by these scams. The "loot" is lucrative game points that hackers steal and then sell at a profit.

The latest target in this battle was World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer on-line role-playing game (MMORPG) manufactured by Blizzard Entertainment Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based game software developer. In May, Win32.WOW, a new Trojan attacked the accounts of World of Warcraft players. The malicious virus had the potential of shattering the on-line land of Azeroth.

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