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US and UK 'spy on virtual games like World of Warcraft'

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Leak: Spies snooped in online games. Leaked documents show spy agencies pried into online video games"World of Warcraft" and "Second Life" were among those targetedDocuments were leaked by former contractor Edward SnowdenTech companies have called for tighter surveillance restraints (CNN) -- Spies with surveillance agencies in the United States and United Kingdom may have spent time undercover as orcs and blood elves, infiltrating video games like "World of Warcraft" in a hunt for terrorists "hiding in plain sight" online.

Leak: Spies snooped in online games

Dan Geer Explains the Government Surveillance Mentality. World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games. Visitors play "World of Warcraft" at an exhibition stand during the Gamescom 2012 fair in Cologne, Germany.

World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games

(Ina Fassbender/Reuters) Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents [3]. Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Andrew W. Infiltrating a Virtual Gaming World - Document. NSA Spying on Online Gaming Worlds. The NSA is spying on chats in World of Warcraft and other games.

NSA Spying on Online Gaming Worlds

There's lots of information -- and a good source document. While it's fun to joke about the NSA and elves and dwarves from World of Warcraft, this kind of surveillance makes perfect sense. If, as Dan Geer has pointed out, your assigned mission is to ensure that something never happens, the only way you can be sure that something never happens is to know everything that does happen.

Which puts you in the impossible position of having to eavesdrop on every possible communications channel, including online gaming worlds. One bit (on page 2) jumped out at me: The NMDC engaged SNORT, an open source packet-sniffing software, which runs on all FORNSAT survey packet data, to filter out WoW packets. NMDC is the New Mission Development Center, and FORNSAT stands for Foreign Satellite Collection.

Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies. To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something.

Xbox Live among game services targeted by US and UK spy agencies

The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs. That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.

The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Report: NSA spying on virtual worlds, online games. LONDON (AP) — American and British intelligence operations have been spying on gamers across the world, media outlets reported, saying that the world's most powerful espionage agencies sent undercover agents into virtual universes to monitor activity in online fantasy games such as "World of Warcraft.

Report: NSA spying on virtual worlds, online games

" Stories carried Monday by The New York Times, the Guardian, and ProPublica said U.S. and U.K. spies have spent years trawling online games for terrorists or informants. The stories, based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, offer an unusual take on America's world-spanning surveillance campaign, suggesting that even the fantasy worlds popular with children, teens, and escapists of all ages aren't beyond the attention of the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ. Spy agencies have long worried that such games serve as a good cover for terrorists or other evildoers who could use in-game messaging systems to swap information. Spy Games: NSA and CIA Allegedly Tried to Recruit World of Warcraft and Second Life Players. The Internet is vast in ways no country’s clandestine security apparatuses could have anticipated: there’s simply no way to police it all.

Spy Games: NSA and CIA Allegedly Tried to Recruit World of Warcraft and Second Life Players

But that hasn’t stopped the NSA and CIA from poking around in interactive entertainment back corners and alleyways, trawling games like World of Warcraft and Second Life for cyber-ne’er-do-wells, according to a new report jointly published by the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica. In a report titled “World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games,” ProPublica lays out the framework by which the NSA and CIA allegedly worked to snoop in online games, attempting to zero in on terrorists or criminals who might try to use the hypothetically anonymous virtual environments to communicate, move money or plot attacks.

As such, says ProPublica: The findings stem from the trove of classified information released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Information from that stack has been released intermittently since June 2013. US and UK 'spy on virtual games like World of Warcraft' 9 December 2013Last updated at 17:54 ET.

US and UK 'spy on virtual games like World of Warcraft'