young leaked documents from Edward Snowden uncover that theNSA and British intelligence have been spying on people in World of Warcraftand other online game . AndNeal Stephenson ’s epic undercover agent novel REAMDEpredicted this whole flock back in 2011 .
https://kotaku.com/american-and-british-government-may-have-spied-on-wow-a-1479468945
https://gizmodo.com/neal-stephensons-reamde-is-a-high-tech-incarnation-of-t-5849371
Over at Ars Technica , Sean Gallager reports :
“ Al Qaida terrorist target chooser and GVE executables have been found associated with Xbox Live , Second Life , World of Warcraft , and other GVEs in PINWALE internet dealings , TAO databases , and in forensic data , ” the study posit . “ Other targets let in Taiwanese hacker , an Persian atomic scientist , Hizballah , and Hamas appendage . ” And the games and virtual world not only provided a possible mode to monitor communication theory between these soul but could also leave their geographic locating , information on their social web ( through buddy lists ) , and a likely way to drop malware onto their computers to pull in even more data . “ It has been well documented that terrorists are OPSEC and technical school savvy and are only getting more so over time , ” the study note . “ These applications and their servers however , are commit by their users and make a connexion to another computer on the cyberspace , which can then be exploited . ”
The GCHQ “ has a vigorous effort to exploit GVEs , ” the inquiry report stated , and by January 2007 , it had already built psychometric test edition of “ using modules ” for Xbox Live and World of Warcraft . The GCHQ had expected to integrate the monitoring of Xbox Live and WoW into its reportage by April of 2008 .
If you ’ll call in , in Neal Stephenson ’s latest novel REAMDE , one of the major subplots has to do with a virus written by Chinese hacker who want to elude people who wreak an online fantasy game similar to World of Warcraft but with built - in anonymity . Their relatively harmless scam has spill out of the game world and infect the laptop computer of a Russian mafia heavy , who need these hack ’ blood .
And that ’s when — semi - every which way — a radical of terrorists enter the picture . I ’m not run to give the rich and excellent plot away , but suffice to say the action leads to a crowd of word agents have to diddle a fantasy role playing biz for a sweaty weekend in the Philippines for meet intel .
In the setting of Stephenson ’s novel , this is a legitimate intelligence service - gathering activity . The agents have to do it because the pillowcase they ’re pursuing really is taking place partly in the plot world . They ’re not doing what Snowden ’s leaks disclose the NSA has been doing since 2008 , which is essentially a sportfishing military expedition where a lot of agent are paid to represent WOW and Second Life to see if they can find some bad guys .
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