PC gamers don't have it easy. Alongside the constant hardware arms race and GPU penis-envy, you have the problem that your platform of choice might not just be used for gaming. Even in a locked room with no interwebs a Windows PC is like a magnet for malware and viruses. What's worse, the remedy for such net.bastards - anti virus software - can slow your PC down and hog precious memory.

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The next time you run with a pick-up group in your favourite MMO, watch out. One of those randoms could be a terrorist, or a spook. According to Wired's Danger Room blog, the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference in Washington, Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University, painted a picture where terrorists gather in World of Warcraft to plan an attack on the White House. Wired has the full Powerpoint of this talk at their blog, so get ready to laugh/cry/hurl/gawp at what peacekeepers are thinking could be going on in the world's biggest MMO.

There are laughs a plenty thanks to poor grasp of WoW speak. If they want to catch terrorists in WoW, they'd better go native. And, in fact, that's exactly the point. Hmmm... devil's advocate take on why they may be right after the jump.

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While tooling about the web lately you may have come across an advert for a Free Online Batman Game (pictured).

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I find security issues facing games pretty interesting; PlayNoEvil is one of my favourite spots for discussion about security related issues. Gamasutra sat down with Gene Hoffman, CEO of Vindicia, a billing and fraud management company, about the issues facing MMOs and ways to mitigate those issues. Of particular concern are the RMT resale markets (if it exists), and chargebacks. And what of the mingling of real and virtual economies? Hoffman has this to say:

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Dean Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury News revealed that people can take advantage of a known QuickTime problem and become virtual pickpockets in Linden Lab's Second Life. Steve over at PlayNoEvil points out that "anything can that actually affect the integrity of the game or business application should be completely independent of these services to ensure that a breach in 'the other guy's stuff' doesn't affect the security of your business - especially casual applications and services that do not see themselves as having security functionality." Linden Labs confirmed the vulnerability, but the researchers who exploited the flaw were quick to note the issue can be resolved with a simple patch. Still - I think Steve's got a point:

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EVE Online went down for nearly nine hours last Friday due to a security breach. Here's more from their official statement:

...we discovered an anomaly in the EVE Online Database indicating a potential exploit. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation... that group concluded that our best course of action was to go completely dark while an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure was executed.

EVE Online service restored after unexpected downtime [eveonline]

Don't panic! Yes, according to a report from GameDaily BIZ, a pair of PlayStation Network accounts were accosted during a minor "breach of security" at Sony Computer Entertainment America. This wasn't the work of a team of nefarious hackers of the Anonymous cyber-terrorist organization, but a simple duping of a customer service employee that resulted in the release of unauthorized information to a single user.

SCEA Senior Corporate Communications Manager Kimberly Otzman told GameDaily BIZ that "In response to the incident, SCEA immediately enhanced its customer service protocol, implementing additional security safeguards, and began an intensive investigation of the incident that remains ongoing." OK. Now you can panic.

SCEA IT Imposter Gains Access to PSN User Accounts [GameDaily BIZ]

PlayNoEvil has an interesting meditation up on some remarks made by Peter Edward, director of the Home platform for PS3, relating to some of their advertisers (Marlboro, Durex, and Bacardi - woo!), and tangentially, some of challenges of age verification and the threat of having to move and buy a new PS3 if your account is banned for not being able to play well with others (are we looking at another minor PR disaster when someone buys a refurbished PS3 that comes pre-banned?).

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