American and British intelligence agencies have "infiltrated" online games including World of Warcraft and Second Life. That's according to documents dating back to 2008, leaked by Edward Snowden and reported on by The Guardian, ProPublica, and The New York Times.
Spies from multiple American and British agencies reportedly created characters to snoop on gamers, fearing that terrorists could blend in with legitimate players and use the anonymity and cover MMOPRGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) offer to communicate, transfer funds, or plan attacks. The documents show that spies from both the CIA and FBI were active in Second Life, and a "deconfliction" group was set up to avoid agents spying on one another.
In addition to virtually wandering the World of Warcraft, agencies also used open-source packet-sniffing software to filter out data using parsing scripts provided by the UK's GCHQ. "These logs are now being forwarded to GCHQ for additional analysis, target development, and network knowledge enrichment," reads the leaked document. It continues to note that GCHQ has uncovered potential Signals Intelligence by "identifying accounts, characters, and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation, and arms dealing."
All three publications note that a GCHQ document, also dating back to 2008, claims the agency has "successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live." It's important to note these documents are all five years old now, and it's not clear if the agencies still have access to any of the networks mentioned in the reports.
The documents also show mobile gaming was a potential target. The document predates the iPhone's App Store and the prolific rise of smartphone games, and it appears agencies were biding their time, waiting for the mobile gaming market to become more popular before considering action.
Comments
Shit, I hope they didn’t see the 5 games of Fifa14 I played. I got BATTERED in every one of them.
Embarrassing…
By tompalainan on 12.09.13 8:00am
LOL.
Funniest first comment on the verge.
By harshpwd on 12.09.13 8:17am
I respectfully disagree.
By tompalainan on 12.09.13 8:31am
I respect your right to disagree but disagree in turn
By email_kiwi on 12.09.13 9:45am
Screw you man. I ain’t no joke. This is SERIOUS. I am TERRIBLE at Fifa online.
I can beat the computer almost every time offline on WORLD CLASS. So I get all confident and fire up the modem to play some homies in Japan or some shit. BOOM 5-0 defeat.
You don’t know what it’s like.
By tompalainan on 12.09.13 10:07am
“fire up the modem” is heartwarming, soothing, very christmas-y :D
By cico on 12.09.13 11:22am
“.. chesnuts roasting by a cable modem … fifa nerds kicking at your toes …”
By eternalozzie on 12.09.13 11:39am
Well, see, there’s yo problem.
You’re still on that dieallap, ya need to try some ADSL+
Hoo-ha!
By Kangal on 12.09.13 7:08pm
By email_kiwi on 12.09.13 11:56am
Add me and I teach you
By dre.onedon on 12.09.13 3:24pm
Yeah it takes some badass skills to infiltrate world of warcraft.
By Zoram on 12.09.13 8:02am
It would actually take some incredible skill to filter out any useful information from this snooping. The signal-to-noise ratio of any MMO, particularly when most of the conversation is about raiding and invading, must be such as to make the entire effort pointless.
By vladsavov on 12.09.13 8:05am
I would also think it would be moot because all messages would be sent in whispers to one another. The bad guys aren’t just going to talk to some random person or talk in the General and Trade channels or do it in one of the cities. It’s a huge world. The only difference is if the NSA had access to logs like Blizzard did then they could do some analysis. There was so much more than just raiding, etc. to. Lots of talk about weapons, ammo. Hell, one of the common sayings in a raid was “nuking” a mob.
By optionalpants on 12.09.13 8:14am
My thoughts as well. I suspect that “NSA Agents” that wanted to create characters in order to “spy on World of Warcraft” really just wanted to be paid by tax payers while playing WoW.
By Nickerbocker on 12.09.13 11:47am
im more than sure they had access to logs also. if they could persuade microsoft and others to cooperate, did you think they couldn’t persuade activision to give up logs. im just surprised they didnt choose cod or battlefield as primary targets, especially those guys who insist on playing the terrorists and shoot you another clip even if you are already dead, to make sure you are dead twice.
anyway, this news will be so good on the online multiplayer that it will free up some servers and make the trolls call you gay 10x more, just to make more white noise.
thanks nsa for spying on us again
By freesets on 12.09.13 11:55am
By kwljunky on 12.09.13 1:22pm
My friends and I talked about the same thing on XBL. With many games consisting of bombs that needed planting or various methods of killing people, it must be difficult to discern anything worth noting.
By Moxpox19 on 12.09.13 5:17pm
Why are we still trying to explain these idiots actions in a logical way? Clearly, the people who made this thing happen are out of the minds.
By varagor on 12.10.13 5:43am
It really does feel sometimes like our government is run by a bunch of level 3 blood elves.
By gogadgetgo on 12.09.13 8:23am
Remember that video of the naked lvl 1 orc mob? that’s the voters.
By russlar on 12.09.13 9:51am
It would take 0 skill to overreact based on not understanding video gaming in general – which is far more plausible.
Example being normal conversation on a PVP server.
By designerfx on 12.09.13 9:31am
Leeroooooooyyyy!!!!
By Boghog on 12.09.13 10:41am
This does not seem like a surprise to me. Something like this happened to one of the kids that I went to high school with. (Luckily I do not think he ever got in real trouble over it) only difference is it was the FBI that responded.
http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=10720662&nav=menu188_2
By mwmisner on 12.09.13 8:04am
Just publish the “NSA spied on everything and everybody” article already.
By vememe on 12.09.13 8:04am
Why? Publishing piece by piece keeps it in the conversation longer. Instead of it being forgotten.
By ZackEmmer on 12.09.13 8:15am