If Law is Code, then too is it a critical point of intersection between our virtual and real lives. Yet, these software and hardware edges are combat zones. Hackers, scripters, on the one side, on the other, developers and their supporting cohorts. It is an important struggle that goes to the heart of the integrity of our worlds. On the one hand exploits unchecked can topple our virtual cathederals. On the other hand, sometimes the solutions ask compromises from us. When is the cure worse than the disease?
We thank Sean Meadows for bringing to our attention an interesting turn in this struggle involving NCSoft and some of their games...
It would seem that we, as players, as elves, as superheros, or rogues - or whatever your vocation - are in the midst of a vast co-evolutionary struggle.
The use by game developers of specialized software products to monitor and protect game clients on the surface seems a natural development. NCSoft's purported use of such a system (see BUGTRAQ citation below) appears as one example. The product manufacturer in this case claims the following benefits:
"Malicious code diagnosis and blocking... Blocks Auto-mouse and Macro program... Blocks access and manipulation atempts to the game client... Self protection of security module... Detects Speed hack... Optimized CPU occupancy rate"
Because of the nature of the attacks this product guards against and the design of how it is to be integrated with client software, its solution necessitates a substantial and intrusive reach into the host computer system. Ryu Conner asserts that this reach may be dangerous (via this BUGTRAQ report). What of the larger implications?
That there are barbarians pounding the virtual gates is no suprise. Consider, for example, a forum post (below) with its claimed instruction on how to (partially) circumvent the cited product. The depth of detail deployed on both sides implies the sophistication:
Tweaked gunbot !!
Hey'a, i was bored this afternoon, so i decied to do some testing stuff. Ive added some professional encryption and protection tools to the newest (and cracked) gunbot, since im to lazy for search the original one, and im just wanna know if it works normally. If works, if the releasers want to, they can give me the original proggy and il add encryption to the proggy making much more harder to gis team patch it. Since im on win me, i dont know if works.
ohhh, i was almost forgetting it, i was looking the nprotect files, and ive just found out that gunbound.gme has a software protection called "ACProtector", i guess that is this that make gunbound.gme "hide" itself after a while and other stuff, and "gameguard.des" has an packer named "UPX", "gamemon.des" has also the upx protection, file "npggNT.des" has upx.., file "npgmup.des" also have the upx protection, file "npgmup.des.new" has upx protection, file "npsc.des" also have upx..., and FINALLY "NPSCAN.DES" has a protection called "PE Compact". so, if u wanna make a bypass, first u gotta kill ALL those protections.
If the moorings of the virtual to the physical world becomes messy and expensive, this could sour the economics of deploying these worlds in configurations and platforms that are multi-purpose and familiar to us today. That would be a shame.
