McAfee’s Igor Muttik has put together the results of a white paper on online gaming & security [PDF]. The white paper lists the various security problems associated with online gaming, and some potential solutions. Given the growth of online gaming, you won’t be surprise to learn that security issues have gone up dramatically in 2007, and even more so in 2008. Approximately 40-50% of password stealing Trojans out there target online gamers specifically - which is huge!

Online gamers are starting to suffer from real-world problems such as identity theft, extortion, and theft of virtual assets. Given that virtual money in various of these virtual online communities can be exchanged for real money, it’s not surprising that these attacks have sprouted up. The white paper goes into all of this in detail. 

Security issues associated with online games:

• Data-stealing Trojans - to record access information to steal virtual assets. These Trojans are second only to those that steal banking data.
• Phishing - to gain access to virtual assets
• Viruses / malware - to deliver the data-stealing code

About half of the document goes into the best practices associated with creating secure gaming environments. This talks about scripting but also about the “3 pillars of security” of technology, economic measures and human factors.

Download the report here.