Cheating Online Games and why Google is Evil

[gem at cigital.com (Gary McGraw)]

Hi all,

Just back from vacation and digging out from the pile.  Ironic that a
vacation seems to be a necessity to catch up from vacation!

A couple of things popped while I was flying around (sans toothpaste
there at the end).  At Blackhat a couple of weeks ago, Greg Hoglund gave
a talk called "Hacking World of Warcraft(r): An Exercise in Advanced
Rootkit Design"
<http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-06/bh-usa-06-speakers.html>.  Greg
and I are working on a book together  called "Exploiting Online Games".
AWL released a "short cut" which is basically part of the unfinished
book in pdf form called "Cheating Online Games"
<http://www.awprofessional.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321460723&rl=
1>.  The short cut concept is a new for AWL, and we're the guinea
pigs...what do you think?

Greg and I think that online games make an excellent petri dish for
studying advanced concepts in distributed systems and software security.
Lots of cool tech, and an arms race that is second to none.

During vacation (deadlines never cease) I also wrote a piece for
darkreading called "Why Google is Evil"
<http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=100643&WT.svl=column1_3>
.  This is about the idea of using Google to look for targets and
sploits, something that has come up on sc-l in the past.  If you're
really psyched about mis-using Google, check out Johnny Long's book.

Feedback is always welcome.  Happy August 14th.

gem

company www.cigital.com
podcast www.cigital.com/silverbullet
book www.swsec.com 


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