UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL ENGINEERING THREATS IN MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE OLE-PLAYING GAMES: AN ISSUE REVIEW

In this developing virtual era, the recreational activities like online games have turned into very intriguing tasksby giving whole new identities and avatars to individuals. This allows the individual to interact and also doanything that seemed possible as well as impossible in real lives. This virtual identification sometimes crosses intothe real world, as they allow gamers to sell virtual game items for real-world money in markets and sometimeseven requires use of real money to create or purchase personal property in their online world. This has created anopportunity for virtual crimes involving social and technical risks. The widespread adoptions of such MassivelyMultiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) have not only become a dedicated activity for gamers but alsoact as a platform for social engineers. Social Engineering is considered as an art of collecting sensitivedata/information by persuasion or manipulation of individuals and is the first step involving social risk in virtualcrimes. MMORPGs were found to be highly socially interactive environments providing the opportunity to not onlyform relationships but also to be targeted by social engineers. In this study, we are reviewing and evaluating socialinteractions and psychological factors of MMORPG gamers which are making them vulnerable to socialengineering threats. Various studies have assessed the psychological factors making an individual vulnerable tosocial engineering on social network interactions and also few studies have analysed the behaviours andrelationships of gamers in online interactions. Observing such factors, in this study we analysed how the socialengineers, disguised as fellow gamer, would target similar psychological vulnerabilities in the gamers by usingsocial interaction platform on MMORPGs to gather personal and sensitive data from the targeted gamers.