Videogame cheaters get $erious
Cheating like this in video games has a long and even respected tradition. Games have often slyly included ways — intentionally or not — for sophisticated players to hack into the software and then skip levels or take on supernatural powers.
But these days, the subject is getting a more serious look. Unlike older games, today's are networked to be played with strangers over the Internet. And now, real money is at stake. Fantasy games like "World of Warcraft" and computer environs like "Second Life," to name a few, have their own currency or other virtual valuables that can be traded for hard U.S. dollars.
In other words, hacking into a video game to cheat can be a business strategy. And so clamping down on it could be key to maintaining virtual worlds' economies and reputations. Even chipmaker Intel Corp. is suggesting a technology for doing it.
But one huge question is: Can cheating really be stifled?
"What I've always said is: It'll go away the same time crime goes away," said Tony Ray, founder of Even Balance Inc., which makes cheating-detection software called Punkbuster. "There's always somebody trying to get around the rules."
Complex games operate partly on central servers run by the game companies and partly on a player's own computer. Essentially, the individual computer reports back to the game on the mouse clicks or trigger pulls performed by the player, and the game registers the appropriate response. That's where cheating hacks often occur: Tell your computer to report 100 trigger pulls for every one actually made, and you've turned a pistol into a machine gun that racks up points much faster.
McGraw and Hoglund offer ideas for how game makers could seal up such holes. And they argue that the entire software industry needs to be watching, since these "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" are at the leading edge of computing.
"The kinds of problems that they are facing right now are direct indications of the kinds of software security problems we can all face in the coming years," McGraw said.
Cheating tools flourish online, catering to insiders conversant in the games' arcane language.
"Take advantage of this programming breakthrough — why waste time grinding with the grunts!" reads one ad for a $25 downloadable cheat package for "World of Warcraft" that purports to be "undetectable."
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