Many thieves stole credentials from networks of hijacked home computers - known as botnets - or used them as proxies to make the theft look like it was coming from a legitimate source. It was a particular problem in Asia where the sales of virtual game goods were well established. Virtual goods were much easier to launder and dispose of than tangible items such as flat screens and computers, he said. "Players invest years of time and effort into developing their Runescape character so the theft of a Runescape account shouldn't be treated differently to the theft of any other valuable possessions such as a games console, television or car," he said.Īlisdair Faulkner, a computer security expert at ThreatMetrix, said it was seeing many more hi-tech thieves turn to stealing virtual rather than real goods.
"They were going directly after the user credentials and trying to get at the wealth that way," he said. Jagex's efforts to tackle farming had removed 90% of the problem, said Mr Gerhard. "Once you close one vulnerability you move the attack surface to another part," he said. Mr Gerhard said its efforts to tackle gold-farming may have forced the thieves to try a different approach.
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Trade in Runescape game gold is against the terms and conditions of the game and Jagex has made many changes to its underlying code to stamp out gold farming in which players repeat activities that generate lots of virtual cash or valuable items. He predicted that there would be more arrests as Jagex knew the handful of people behind the crimes and where they were based. The biggest audience for Runescape is in the US and UK and Mr Gerhard said it was working with forces in both nations to track down the virtual thieves. It was one result, he said, of a long term investigation that had sought out those behind the phishing attack that caught out a "few thousand" Runescape players. Mr Gerhard said the arrest on 24 November was not the result of something that happened the day before. "Any online games company will tell you that as soon as the game has value, there's a very small foreign element that tries to exploit that value," he said. "We have pinned down and identified the handful of ring leaders and we are going after them with both barrels," Mark Gerhard, chief executive of Jagex told BBC News. This virtual money can be traded to others in-game or sold for real world cash.Ĭurrent underground exchange rates suggest that 2m Runescape gold costs about £6 ($10). Once hi-tech thieves have these credentials they plunder the accounts, strip characters of their items and sell off the rare virtual goods for Runescape gold. Hi-tech thieves target online games because virtual goods are easy to launder
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