Virtual Worlds & Security

clipped from www.canada.com Criminals step into virtual world Gaming spawns new generation of theft DANNY BRADBURY, Canwest News Service Charlie Miller makes it his business to find such threats. He used a flaw in the QuickTime software provided by Apple, which Second Life's own software uses to play videos in the game. Creating a small pink box inside the game and wrapping it with a malicious video, Miller was able to remotely manipulate the computer of anyone who happened to interact with the object. "We could take over their character and make it do things. For example, we determined how much virtual currency they owned, and then we made them transfer that to our character," he said, adding that because accounts in Second Life are linked to credit cards, he could force the victim's character to keep buying Linden dollars with their credit card and keep transferring the cash to his own account. most games offer a way to exchange in-game goods and currencies for real-world cash.