{"id":107837,"date":"2016-10-13T14:58:10","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=107837"},"modified":"2016-10-13T14:59:15","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:59:15","slug":"inside-the-secret-black-market-for-video-game-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/107837-inside-the-secret-black-market-for-video-game-currency","title":{"rendered":"Inside the secret black market for video game currency"},"content":{"rendered":"

The practice of purchasing online video game currency through third-party retailers is largely accepted, with a large number of websites dedicated specifically to this currency trade.<\/p>\n

However, criminals have taken advantage of this thriving currency exchange to steal in-game\u00a0currency and sell it for real money.<\/p>\n

The ability to exchange video game currency for real-world money allows cybercriminals to regularly make money by stealing player accounts and information.<\/p>\n

An in-depth Trend Micro report <\/a><\/strong>outlines the basic process followed by cybercriminals who make money using\u00a0the virtual currency market:<\/p>\n

\n

Theft<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The first step taken by cybercriminals is the acquisition of virtual currency from other player accounts.<\/p>\n

The most common practices used to steal virtual currency from other players include hacking account credentials, phishing, and social engineering.<\/p>\n

Once these criminals have access to another player’s account, they simply transfer that player’s currency to their own account.<\/p>\n

\"Hacker\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Advertising<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This is where the large number of virtual currency trading sites come in.<\/p>\n

These users take their stolen currency and advertise across various platforms including dedicated sites, social media, and the deep web.<\/p>\n

Most of these advertisements and websites are easily located without the need to venture into the Deep Web.<\/p>\n

\"wow-gold-advert\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Selling<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The cybercriminals can then easily sell their ill-gotten gains to various buyers, using a secure and accepted online transaction service.<\/p>\n

Safe and legitimate transactions are ensured by using escrow services and trusted gold-selling websites.<\/p>\n

\"Money<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Laundering<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now the cybercriminal has an amount of real money in their possession, and must process it in order to remove traces of past transactions.<\/p>\n

This is easily done by converting the money to cryptocurrency, which makes it very difficult to trace previous transactions.<\/p>\n

Some criminals choose to use money-cleaning services in addition to cryptocurrency conversion.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Usage<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now that the money has been cleaned, it can be withdrawn at leisure and used to fund future attacks on players and services.<\/p>\n

Advanced hacking tools and DDoS attacks can be used to compromise account security and result in\u00a0the entire cycle starting again.<\/p>\n

\"Hacker<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n
\n

Now read:\u00a0The strangest lawsuits in gaming<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Criminals have been laundering money through your favourite online video games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":107839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[20484,22725,10879,22727],"class_list":["post-107837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-pc","tag-criminal","tag-laundering","tag-report","tag-trend-micro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}