An article at CNN (Reuters) covers the trend that criminals are now targeting online games to steal people’s hard earned ‘virtual’ gold.

The multiplayer online games are now being targeted by criminals that will try to steal the hard earned rewards from players of succesful games like World of Warcraft. ” ‘Those of you who are working on massively multiplayer online games, organized crime is already looking at you,’ said Dave Weinstein, a Microsoft security”. Obviously if you can make money from it and it’s not too hard to elaborate a plan to steal it then I’m sure there are unscrupulous people out there willing to find a way to get rich by stealing from others.

As Weinstein says :

“The police are really good at understanding someone stole my credit card and ran up a lot of money. It’s a lot harder to get them to buy into ‘someone stole my magic sword.”

Article ref. : Microsoft: MMO games face security risk